The Cat Came Back
by neko no warai
Summary: There's a new threat against Camelot, and Arthur is determined to find out what it is. Merlin thinks he has the perfect plan. After all, who would suspect an innocent cat? Unfortunately, Merlin needs a bit more practice with shape-shifting magic...
1. Catcall

**Summary**: A new threat against Camelot has arisen, and Arthur is determined to find out what it is. Merlin thinks he has the perfect plan-to infiltrate their enemy's ranks. And who would suspect an innocent cat? Unfortunately, Merlin needs a bit more practice with his shape-shifting magic...

**Warning**: Takes place following Season 4, episode 2, but I'll try not to have glaring spoilers for anyone.

**Words**: 3,000-ish.

**Notes**: You have no idea how much fun it is to write this story! Here's hoping its equally as fun to read.

The name is inspired in part by the always amusing poem/song:

The cat came back the very next day,  
>the cat came back—thought he was a goner,<br>But the cat came back for it just wouldn't stay away.

It's very fitting, I promise.

**The Cat Came Back**

**Chapter One: Catcall**

The table shook when Merlin slammed his head down. He didn't dare open his eyes and face the window.

Instead, he liked to pretend that the stars were still out and his back wasn't warm because of an early sunbeam. He liked to pretend that he hadn't been trying the same spell for over six hours with as much success as a fire underwater.

At this point, he didn't even care if Gaius woke up and lectured him.

But the snoring roared on and Merlin's back remained warm.

He sighed out his exhaustion and sternly told the wood of the table, "It is going to work."

Cloth shifted as Gaius turned over.

With his eyes closed and his mind so tired it was blank, he repeated the spell. He could feel his magic coursing through his veins, trying to reach every part of his body. It felt so natural to have it flowing freely so for once, he just let it be. He didn't try to hide it or stifle it.

It was like taking a full breath for the first time in years.

But the magic faded, and he could once again feel the warmth on his back. His whole body slumped in disappointment.

'I'll have to try again when Arthur's done with me.'

He might have continued to slump over the table as the picture of misery, but the smell of food drifted past him. It took him by surprise, and he opened his eyes.

He promptly fell off the chair in his shock.

'Gaius! I think I ruined the world.' Merlin was sure he meant to say the words out loud, but the only thing he heard was an undignified whine.

He tried to put a hand to his throat, as if that would tell him what was wrong, but something felt unnatural. He looked down. There, in much sharper detail than he should be able to see, and slightly distorted colour, was a cat's paw.

Merlin stared at it a little longer.

He flexed his hand, and the paw flexed too. He stretched a little father, and felt his fingers dig into the ground as claws extended from the paw.

A gleam came to bright blue eyes.

It worked.

'Never mind, Gaius, I fixed it,' he tried to say, but again he only heard a soft mewl.

He grinned.

This time, when he looked around the room, he understood. Things weren't bigger and the world didn't lose its crisp colours because he'd ruined it, but because he was looking through a different set of eyes.

After a sleepless night of practicing in the dark with whispered words and no progress, his shape-shifting magic worked.

He flexed his new claws experimentally. He turned his head to catch sight of a fluffy, almost black tail. It twitched, quite against his will. He tried to flick it to the right, but it went left. He told it to lie flat, but it swished back and forth.

'Oh well. Who needs a tail anyway?'

He sniffed the air. The tempting smell of cheese and bread was drifting on the slightest of breezes. It was what had roused him earlier. Merlin was sure that Gaius had not left his breakfast out, which meant that Merlin could smell food through the cupboard.

He flicked his ears forward and back, and marvelled at the different sounds they picked up. Forward, and there was the wind whispering through the corridors and making the wood creak. Back, and Gaius' snores were like thunder. There was a scuffling sound to his right, and footsteps to his left. Servants starting their mornings with the rising of the sun.

His cat-grin widened.

'This is perfect!' he thought. He took a step toward the cupboard that had such tempting smells-

Only to stumble over his own paws and go headfirst into the table, sending his stack of books clattering to the ground and nearly on his head. All because he forgot to pull in his front claws before walking.

The noise made his ears wring, so he wasn't surprised to see Gaius startled awake and sitting up. He was looking around wildly, never toward the ground where Merlin picked himself up, shook out the dust in his fur, and sat down as if he owned the world.

It was quite hilarious, but after five minutes of watching Gaius look confused, Merlin grew bored. He decided it was time to get Gaius' attention, so he meowed in his most demanding voice, as he'd seen other cats do when they want something.

What came out was a high-pitched squeak.

Gaius finally turned toward him. His frown deepened. "A black cat," he said. His tone was wary in a way that Merlin didn't expect.

Merlin looked himself over and tried to find what it was about his new body that was so suspicious.

"More of a kitten, really."

Merlin froze.

A kitten?

A tiny, defenceless, pathetic _kitten_?

He scrambled toward the stairs, forgetting once again that extended claws had a tendency to dig into wood. After tripping and rolling back to his feet, he was faced with a climb that looked nearly impossible. His head hardly cleared the first step. But with determination and claws that could finally serve a better purpose than tripping him, he made it up to his room.

To his fortune, he'd not cleaned said room properly in weeks, which meant there was all manner of things scattered across the floor. In particular, there was a shiny food platter he'd stolen from Arthur when the prat had been staring at his reflection for too long. Now Merlin stood over this make-shift mirror and stared into the wide, _innocent_ eyes that were staring back.

'Why?' he asked the universe.

With his heightened senses came a trade-off: the world was now in muted colours. It was not that he couldn't tell what each colour was—his fur was a dark brown that would be black if it weren't for the sunbeams sifting through it, and his shirt in the corner was a deep red—but they were not as vibrant as he was used to. Instead, their edges were crisp and clear, and any slight movement, like the wind rustling the leg of his pants, stood out in sharp detail.

But even when the world's colours were dulled, the eyes staring up at him were the exact shade of blue as they'd been when he was human.

He looked over his reflection mournfully. Indeed, his face was not sharp and defined, but round. His eyes were large. His ears were large. His body was covered in medium-length fur that was sure to keep him warm in the coming winter, but was a touch too fuzzy to belong to a dignified, respectable older cat.

His whole body slumped—he'd turned himself into what looked like a six-month-old kitten.

He was still staring at himself miserably—moping, Gaius would have said—when he heard footsteps that were almost booming coming up the stairs.

He looked up. Then looked up some more. Then he was finally looking up far enough that he could glare at Gaius.

The old man's brows furrowed. Merlin watched as Gaius took in the bed, neatly made and clearly lacking a young boy. Gaius looked back at a cat that acted a little too human, staring into a mirror and now glaring. Then he must have noticed the eyes that were as open and expressive as they'd been when he was human, because Gaius knelt down.

"Merlin?"

Merlin forgot about his young appearance in favour of beaming with pride. It was clear in his catty smirk, and in the way his tail was straight up in the air (he told it to go back down, but it continued to do what it pleased). He sauntered over to Gaius, with his claws carefully sheathed.

"What on Earth have you done now?"

Merlin had his mouth open and ready to retort before he realized that despite his most careful effort, he would not be able to form words.

'I should have worked out a spell to make cats speak,' he thought ruefully.

He held out a paw and slid his claws out, intent on scratching his answer in the wood of the floor.

He was whacked upside the head, and though it was half the force as normal, his world still trembled for a moment.

"Do _not_ wreck my floors with suspicious messages like 'I was being a fool again and practicing obvious magic.'"

Merlin scowled.

"You might as well change yourself back and tell me," Gaius said.

Merlin rolled his eyes—an act he was glad he could do even as a cat. All of his hard work and Gaius couldn't even see the brilliance.

No matter. He was confident that he could pull it off again now that he got the hang of it. And it would be awfully nice to have the world back to its proper size, where bed posts didn't loom over him like trees, and where he didn't trip himself just trying to walk (...or at least where he didn't trip himself as often...).

He was about to recite the ever-essential "undo" spell when a horrible realization dawned on him.

'I can't talk.'

He tried anyway, wincing at the series of mewls and howls that came from his throat, but he didn't even feel a stirring of his magic. He tried to think it, _very_ forcefully, but there wasn't a flicker.

In a panic, he stared at the red shirt across the room and _willed_ it to move, as he'd been doing since birth.

Finally, the magic bubbled up inside of him and the shirt rose off the ground. It wobbled mid-air and dragged the sleeves as it drifted toward him. His paw didn't make a very good conduit the way his outstretched hand had as a human, but at least he could _breathe_, in the only way he'd ever known. He didn't want to imagine what life would be like if his magic was cut out of him.

He let the shirt drop and felt an odd tiredness sink into his bones.

He turned worried blue eyes up at Gaius, begging for understanding.

Gaius' gaze softened, and he put a large hand over the whole of Merlin's head. "Never mind. I'm sure we'll find a way to fix this before Arthur leaves tomorrow."

Merlin closed his eyes and leaned into the touch.

The world was too loud, now. He could hear the pulse in Gaius' hand as clear as the wind whistling through castle windows. He could catch snippets of voices as they passed their quarters, and if he flicked his ears toward them, he could sometimes catch words.

Yes, a cat was a perfect spying disguise, but what use would he be with nothing more than instinctual magic if he couldn't make himself human again?

oOoOoOo

Their morning passed in stifling silence—a sure sign that the world was not right if Merlin was in the room.

Said warlock-turned-feline glanced up (and didn't that feel weird, having to look _up_ when he was standing on a table?). He searched Gaius' face for any sign of success, but there was none. Only the strain of frustration.

Merlin went back to work. His right paw was sticky with ink. He used the tip of his claw as if it were a quill and practiced his cat-calligraphy. It was more difficult than he'd anticipated. His arm didn't have the same range of motion that it used to, so he often had to use a well aimed flick of the wrist, which was as likely to produce the desired effect as it was to produce a giant ink blob. After three hours, his writing could almost pass as "human".

There was a heavy thunk as Gaius closed his book. "I'm afraid there is nothing in my books that can change you back," he said. Merlin let his paw rest and hesitantly looked up at Gaius. "The spell you used was meant as a curse, to turn someone _else_ into an animal. Only you can reverse the effects."

'And I can't talk,' Merlin concluded.

Gaius frowned at the resigned mew.

Merlin focused on his paw, and the ink that was currently making little pools of black all over his hard work. With painstaking effort, he traced letters onto the unmarred corner of the parchment. He controlled his muscles and made tiny, delicate movements, until there were legible words.

Merlin felt a warm breath ruffle the fur on the back of his neck as Gaius leaned over to read what he'd written.

_Checking the library may take days._

Gaius' sigh made Merlin squirm. "I'm sorry, Merlin. I'll tell Arthur that you're unwell."

Merlin's head whipped up and he fixed Gaius with a glare that could make even a full-grown male cat tremble.

'I am not staying behind!' was the message that was clear in his bright blue eyes.

"Arthur will be fine," Gaius continued, "He's only going to be there long enough to gather information and get an estimate of their numbers."

In a hasty scribble, Merlin wrote, _That's why I need to go_.

"You're a _kitten_, and a suspicious looking one at that. It's far too dangerous." Merlin would have responded, but Gaius grabbed his paw. "I'm serious. You can hardly use magic."

Merlin wrenched his paw away and scrambled to the other side of the table, where he wrote, in messy cat-ligraphy that showed nothing of the grace he had practiced, _In this body, I can do more than estimate their numbers_.

Then he bounded off the table and focused all of his instinctual magic toward opening the door.

"Merlin!"

He didn't know if Gaius sounded so outraged that Merlin had run away, or if it was because he'd written right on the wood of the table for anyone to see. Merlin didn't stick around to find out.

The door slammed shut behind him.

As he caught his breath, Merlin began to realize how much trouble he was in.

He'd thought he gotten used to the world in the last three hours. He hardly ever tripped over his own front paws, and he was beginning to identify where every smell and sound was coming from.

Now, the world smacked him in the face. There were so many new scents, like the grass and the flowers and the food in the kitchen, and a thousand other things he'd never smelled before. He could hear birds, and rustling, and shuffling, coming closer and closer.

He let out an indignant howl as he was body-checked and sent flying. He landed on his feet, but then went stumbling head over paws.

His world went dark.

He panicked, clawing at the net that was pinning him to the ground. He thrashed and rolled and tried to get the smell of the river out of his head, until suddenly, there was light, and he could breath fresh air again.

He looked down.

His head was sticking out of the sleeve of a shirt.

(Merlin was glad that a cat couldn't flush in embarrassment)

"You wretched creature!"

Merlin followed the voice up to the seething servant that he'd accidentally tripped. The man was red-faced and clearly not a friend of innocent kittens, judging by the way he now loomed over Merlin with the blood-lust of a starving wyvern.

"I'll have to do the wash all over again! Sir Gwaine will never let me hear the end of it if I tell him a stupid _animal_ is to blame."

Merlin was on the brink of feeling sympathy for any servant who was stuck with Gwaine, until he heard the word "stupid".

A new sort of glint came into bright blue cat eyes.

He not-so-subtly turned to stare at the trail of inky paw prints that followed him out of the physician's quarters, then raised his right paw.

The colour drained from the servant's face. "I swear, if you so much as-"

With a cat smirk, Merlin pressed his paw down, leaving a very distinctive ink stain. Then, while the servant's anger consumed him, Merlin stomped all over the shirt until it was covered in dirt and ink.

Merlin, remembering that he had to be alive if he was to be of any use to Arthur, scrambled out of the shirt and ran straight through the servant's legs.

"I'll kill you!"

The laundry was forgotten in favour of a mad chase.

'That's not very responsible of him,' Merlin thought. (Never mind that he'd left Arthur's clothes in the kitchen more than once in favour of sneaking out a few extra fresh-baked bread rolls)

He ran faster.

It might have been adrenaline or survival instinct, but he could feel a strange strength in his back legs, propelling him so fast that the doors in the corridor began to blend together. His sharp sight kept track only of what was in front of him, like the girl carrying a tray of breakfast, and the mouse who saw him coming and darted back to a hole that Merlin had never known was there.

He raced down flights of stairs without so much as a stumble, and zipped past two guards completely unnoticed.

'Arthur would never catch me like this!'

No sooner had the arrogant thought crossed his mind that he rounded a corner and snagged his back claw on an unsuspecting royal red carpet. He went sailing through the air and tumbled forward like a ball of extra-fuzzy yarn. His world was spinning and his head rang, so he didn't bother trying to process the whole new set of sights and scents and sounds.

He laid still.

"Despite five witnesses, you still claim that you have no magic?"

Merlin felt his blood run cold.

* * *

><p>AN: That's it for a first chapter! If you have any unfulfilled dreams of what Merlin would do if he were a cat, feel free to tell me, and they might work their way into the story. No future is set in stone, after all.

~Neko


	2. Cat Fight

**The Cat Came Back**

**Warning**s: Takes place following Season 4, episode 2, but I'll try not to have glaring spoilers for anyone. No violence (yet), and no profanity (most of our swear words hadn't even been invented by that time).

**Words**: ~2,000

**Chapter Two: Cat Fight**

There was a single sickening thought running circles in Merlin's head: 'How does Agravaine know?'

Ever so slowly, when the world was done its warping and spinning, Merlin turned his head toward the throne. Arthur was there, his face a mixture of annoyance and disgust, the way Merlin has always dreaded it would be.

Except it was directed at Merlin.

"Well, sorcerer? Do you deny the accusations?" asked Agravaine.

"I-it wasn't me!"

Merlin sat up straight: he recognized that voice! He craned his neck forward until he could see around the crowd of knights, noblemen, and servants alike.

The sorcerer was older, with flecks of grey peppering his hair and lines marring his face. It would have made him look wise, but for the way he cowed before the court. His eyes were crazed, and they never settled on one thing for too long.

'It _is_ him,' Merlin thought.

It was only a few nights earlier that he and Arthur had caught the man performing magic within a village not a day's ride from Camelot. The fool couldn't have been more obvious, and Merlin was torn between suspicion and sympathy.

Arthur was not torn at all.

"There are three witnesses who saw you make a door appear out of thin air," Arthur said.

"I-it was a trick of the light! No, no, not that. It was their imagination! No, wait, they're lying—"

"Careful, sorcerer. I was a witness too."

The man went pale. His gaze flickered from the prince, to Agravaine, to the people, and even to Merlin. A pang of sympathy made Merlin get to his four paws and stretch. He didn't want to see anymore.

He had just turned back toward the side entrance of the throne room, where he'd stumbled in from, when the sorcerer said, "I was being controlled!"

Merlin rolled his eyes. 'Yeah, like they'll believe that.'

"By the cat!"

In the sudden hush of the room, Merlin could _feel_ the heat from every single pair of eyes as they bore down on him.

He disregarded all of them to lock eyes with the only person who mattered—Arthur.

'Don't listen to him,' he pleaded. It came out as a soft mew.

Blond brows creased.

"What kind of a fool do you take me for?" Arthur asked, but the words had no bite. He was still staring at Merlin with a confused look on his face.

The sorcerer said, "I saw it near that witch, Morgana, and when I went to see what evil they were plotting, something took control over me." It was hard not to notice the note of glee in the man's voice.

Arthur's gaze snapped back to the sorcerer. "Morgana?"

Someone stepped forward. "Sire, I also saw the cat do a spell."

Merlin didn't need to turn around to know that Gwaine's servant had just doomed him. He stared desperately up at Arthur, his wide eyes begging him not to fall for the lies.

For a moment, Merlin swore that Arthur recognized him, but then Agravaine leaned over and said, "It might be true, Sire. Black cats are often the conduits to dark magic."

Merlin felt his fur stand straight in his anger. 'You lying clot pole! You're probably in on the sorcerer's plan!' The heated "words" came out as a pitiful whine that made Arthur's jaw clench.

The prince's tension was painfully obvious to anyone who knew what to look for. Merlin saw it in the hunch of his shoulders, and the set of his mouth. He saw it in white knuckles and strained eyes. Merlin tried to imagine himself in front of the most important people of Camelot, being judged on decisions that he shouldn't have to make. Decisions that should be made by the king, if he were in his right mind.

He was not at all surprised to see Arthur sigh.

"Whether the cat is magical or not," he said, "there is more than enough evidence that you have committed treason against Camelot."

Two guards grabbed the sorcerer and began dragging him away. Nonsense was spewing out of his mouth to the very moment that the heavy doors slammed shut behind him.

"Sire, the cat-"

Arthur waved Agravaine away. "Do with it what you will, I have more important things to attend to."

'Arthur!' Merlin cried, outraged. Every head in the court turned to look at him when the indignant howl came out of his mouth.

Agravaine gave a signal to the guards, and they approached him cautiously.

Merlin levelled one last glare at Arthur (and again, there was that look of surprise on Arthur's face), and then at Gwaine's servant for good measure.

The servant merely waved an ink stained shirt.

Merlin high-tailed it out of there—literally!-with four guards on his heels.

oOoOoOo

'I'm not lost,' Merlin assured himself, 'I just don't know where I am.'

After four years of running around every inch of the castle, it shouldn't have been possible that he got himself lost. He probably knew the castle better than Arthur! But in his zig-zagging to throw off the guards, he had thrown himself off too. He had finally gotten rid of them, but now he couldn't even tell what level of the castle he was on.

The world looked so much different from a foot off the ground.

His keen hearing picked up footsteps coming and going: guards doing their duty to their kingdom. Merlin went in the opposite direction and turned down yet another corridor.

He froze.

There were two guards stationed outside of a door. They were staring straight ahead, so they didn't notice as Merlin ducked behind a pillar.

The wood of the door creaked as it was opened.

'Gwen?'

Merlin watched as Gwen nodded to the guards and started off in the opposite direction.

'It must be Arthur's room!' Merlin thought.

He saw his opportunity shrinking—the door was slowly drifting shut, and the guards wouldn't stare at Gwen's behind forever. With all the bravery he possessed—and quite a bit of the stupidity—Merlin ran full tilt at the door. His legs burned with the strain, but there was only an inch of space left, and Gwen was almost out of sight.

His tail flicked forward just in time for the door to click closed.

His heart hammered in his chest, but it was as much with relief as anything. He made it! Now he could give his clot pole prince a piece of his mind (sort of) and figure out what the plan was for the morning.

He looked up accusingly, then went still.

It was indeed the room of a Pendragon, but the eyes he was staring into were not the ones he'd learned to read as well as any book.

No, these eyes were far less alive.

Merlin felt the pang of pity and guilt that he always got when he had to face the king since Morgana left.

The silence as they stared each other down was so great that Merlin winced at every crash and boom of the commotion on the other side of the door.

'How quickly would Uthur have me killed if I used magic to open the door?'

Merlin was about ready to find out when the king turned back to his food. That must have been what Gwen was doing, because the plate was full. Merlin's nose twitched-there was fresh cheese and at least three kinds of meat, and even some of the sweet bread that the cook made on special days. To Merlin's complete mortification, his stomach growled.

'Shut up,' he told it. (He pretended that the whine of a meow had not come from him.)

Uther did not even glance at Merlin, so Merlin was suitably shocked when a sausage hit him in the face. The scent of it—so warm and perfectly cooked—made him _drool_. It over-powered the sickly, stagnant air of the room and wiped out the faint wisp of nature that drifted in through the open window.

He took a tiny bite, his eyes never leaving Uther.

It was even better than the sausages he stole from Arthur.

He threw caution to the wind and attacked the sausage. It was still hot, so he tore little pieces off with his teeth while his paw pinned the sausage down. He vaguely heard an amused sound, and then a piece of cheese landed just in front of him.

Merlin, having worked through the night and then missed breakfast, suddenly realized how hungry he was. He finished the cheese in time for another sausage to appear in front of him. He took two steps to reach it.

Then a chunk of ham.

Another piece of cheese.

A bit of roast duck!

Merlin was lost in the bliss of delicious food—he'd definitely have to order more roast duck for Arthur's future lunches. When he finished the duck, he stared ahead in expectation.

There was another breathy chuckle, and Merlin was startled to realize it came from directly above him. In fact, if he looked another hand's width ahead, there were two slippered feet, and four ornate chair legs, and-

Oops.

The king had lured him into a trap.

A large hand grabbed the scruff of fur at his neck, and he was sailing through the air. He cringed, tucking his legs as close to his body as he could and unconsciously shutting his eyes ('What if he recognizes me?'). His ears went flat against his head, and even his tail curled in tight around his body.

For a moment, all Merlin could hear was his own heart beating wildly.

Then: "Morgana always wanted a kitten," Uther said.

Merlin let one eye open.

The king was unkempt. His features were gaunt and hollow. There were lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes that weren't there a year ago.

The worst was the eyes. Merlin had spent three years of his life intimidated by the pure conviction and _strength_ in the king's eyes. He may have been unreasonable whenever magic was involved, but there could be no denying that Uther had been the source of security for many people of Camelot. Now, there was no _vibrance_ in once-terrifying blue eyes.

The guilt made Merlin's heart wrench. If he had told Morgana about his magic, or found some other way of fighting the knights of Medir, or even let her die all that time ago-

Air rushed over him as he was lowered to something warm and just a little soft. Trembling fingers stroked down his back. Merlin's claws came out, ready to give him purchase for a quick escape.

"Do an old man a favour," the king said in that painfully tired voice.

Merlin let his shoulders relax, and the claws slid back in.

He could grant a suffering man at least this much.

Arthur would wait.

* * *

><p>AN: Arthur will indeed wait, but not for much longer, because it's too much fun writing about the interactions between a trouble making sorcerer-turned-cat and an oblivious prince. To a few of you, thanks so much for reviewing, and to all of you, thanks for reading!


	3. Catapult

**Warnings**: slight spoilers for Season 4, Episode 2.

**Words**: ~2,800

**Chapter Three: Catapult**

"Give me the report."

"Superficial damage only, Sire. Nothing that can't be replaced."

"Injuries?"

"Two guards, as well as Sir Brennis."

Arthur rubbed at his temple. "And?"

"...it escaped."

There was a crash as Agravaine's fist hit the throne. "You fools! How hard could it be to catch a kitten? Do you not hunt stags and boars?"

Arthur placed a hand on Agravaine's shoulder. "It is already done." He nodded to the guards. "You are to return to your duties."

The six guards bowed—were those claw marks on the balding one's head?-and all but ran out of the throne room.

Agravaine whipped around with fire in his eyes. "Sire, it was a black cat. Sorcerers often use them to harness dark magic. You can't take this matter lightly!"

"What would you have me do? Send my knights after a _cat_? Or do you forget what we learned from the sorcerer in the first place." Arthur didn't stand around and wait for a protest. No, he was tired and hungry because Merlin had never shown up with his breakfast.

He ignored the shattered vases, shredded tapestries, and tiny ink-stained paw prints on his way to his father's chambers. There was only one guard outside his father's door, and he didn't hesitate to move aside for Arthur to throw open the door.

"Father, I know you don't want me to go, but I—what is that?"

His father raised an eyebrow. It was more life than Arthur had seen since Morgana betrayed them.

"Should I have Gaius check your eyesight, my son?"

Arthur's face grew warm at the taunt, but it was nothing compared to the rush of familiarity. As if he had his father back, in all of his intimidating glory.

The only problem with the picture was a supposedly evil black cat curled up asleep in his father's lap.

"I can see fine, Father. I was merely surprised to see a cat in your room." He left out the part about the cat being tenderly petted like a treasured daughter.

Like Morgana.

"I felt pity." Uther stared down at a twitching black ear almost fondly. "It is simple to pretend sometimes."

A great yawn answered, revealing sharp white teeth and a healthy pink tongue. Dazed blue eyes blinked open.

Arthur shifted just enough that his fingers brushed the hilt of his ceremonial sword.

The movement caught the cat's attention, and it snapped it's head up. It scrambled off of Uther's lap, got it's front claws stuck in the table cloth and brought a mass of silver and scraps crashing down on its head.

The ringing clatter made Arthur's headache start pulsing again, so it was with no amount of mercy that he snatched the thing out of the mess and shook the ham and turkey bits out of its fur.

Large black ears were pressed flat.

"Stay still or I toss you out the window," Arthur hissed.

The cat went limp.

Arthur smirked, but it fell away when he saw resignation steal any life out of his father's eyes.

"You've come to tell me you're leaving."

"Only to gather information," Arthur protested.

"Yes, a simple task at face value."

"My best knights will be at my side, Father. We have to know if the sorcerer spoke the truth."

His father turned away, staring out the window like a statue.

"Father—"

"I will not stop you."

Arthur's hands clenched—the words were what he wanted, but the tone was clear: Arthur did not have his blessing. The king merely had no will to fight back.

A tiny mewl of protest made Arthur force his hands to relax.

"I'll be back before a fortnight is up," he said.

There was no response.

Arthur didn't wait for one.

oOoOoOo

Arthur had already closed his father's door behind him when he realized what exactly he was holding. He nearly threw the thing to the ground, but then those big blue eyes were staring up at him with a childlike innocence.

"Don't look at me like that," Arthur told it.

A little black paw, unstained by ink and with fur sticking out between the toes, came up to rest against Arthur's arm.

The eyes seemed to say 'I'm sorry'.

There was a rustle of cloth and chain mail as the guard leaned as far from the cat as he could.

Arthur gave him a quick nod—he didn't know if it was to tell the guard that the cat was safe, or the cat was caught and would be properly dealt with—and strode calmly away. He tucked the cat under his arm, and it made no effort to escape.

oOoOoOo

Arthur couldn't think of anywhere safe to leave the cat, so he dumped it in his own room and shut the door.

He crossed his arms.

The cat stretched lazily,

"Don't touch a thing, and I'll consider letting you live."

The cat shot him such an incredulous look that Arthur took a step back.

A new sheen came into blue eyes, and Arthur swore he saw the corners of the cat's mouth twitch up into a smirk. Very deliberately, it turned toward his bed, and trotted up to it.

"They can build a cat-sized pyre," Arthur said.

The cat leaped and, in one graceless stumble, managed to get tangled in all of the sheets and blankets of the unmade bed (Arthur cursed Merlin once again for not showing up that morning. It was all his fault that he now had a dirt-covered cat cocooned in his bedding).

Arthur scowled, "You're as frustratingly disobedient as Merlin. Maybe the idiot went and got himself a pet."

There was a muffled mew that sounded like agreement.

Arthur's eyes softened.

"If that is true, then I can't bring you back," he said, a little gentle. "The whole castle is looking for you, and I made Gaius promise to keep Merlin busy for the afternoon."

The bed sheets stopped wiggling, and a little black head poked out. It was looking at him with utmost suspicion.

The unspoken question was there: why?

Arthur didn't know what it was that made him answer, but he said, "It's not that I don't like the idiot's company, but after the dorocha and Lancelot-"

His throat closed off of its own accord.

"He doesn't need to come," Arthur finished.

The cat was still staring at him. A kitten's gaze looked much wiser when it was scanning a soul. In an uncharacteristically smooth move, the cat slid out of the tangle of sheets and hopped onto the bedside table. A furry paw swiped out, sending an unlit candle clattering to the ground.

They both watched as it rolled away behind the curtains.

_"You're not afraid."_

_"I am, Merlin. Maybe more than you."_

Arthur remembered all too well. Despite his fear, Merlin had stayed by his side, undoubtedly saving his life. But Arthur never wanted to see the look of hopelessness and _death_ on his most loyal servant's face. His best friend.

"Don't make a mess while I'm gone," Arthur said.

In response, the cat settled down on the table, and stared out the nearby window.

oOoOoOo

Merlin was as touched as he was deeply annoyed. He could feel his tail lashing back and forth. A part of him was elated to know how much Arthur cared, but after everything, how could the prat think he could handle everything alone?

How could he think that Merlin would accept being left behind?

'He didn't,' Merlin corrected himself, 'That's why he's being sneaky about it.'

He peered over the edge of the table. A little shiver of trepidation coursed through him at the height, but he crouched down anyway. Without realizing it, he was in a perfect kitten's pose, with his butt high and his head low. He jumped, and only stumbled into one bed post.

He placed himself square in front of the door and narrowed his eyes. His magic itched to escape, but he reigned it in. With the control he'd been practicing his entire life, he sent his magic toward the door until it inched open.

He let out a breath—it hadn't creaked.

He stuck his head out. There were two guards, but that wasn't unusual, and they had already seen Arthur with a cat. These two in particular were quite nice, Merlin had discovered. He doubted they would harbour ill will to an innocent animal.

Nonetheless, he wedged himself out the opening as quietly as he could. He took a moment to filter through the smells until he found the one that was most familiar—home. Medicines and old wood, and the smell of his bed that he fell asleep to every night.

He followed it, slipping past the guards on silent padded paws. They didn't notice him until he was at the end of the hall, and by then they had also noticed that Arthur's door was open. They ignored Merlin in favour of checking the Prince's chambers.

Merlin rounded a corner and was gone.

He didn't need to pay attention to where he was going. He followed the scent in the air, stopping only when a servant would come into the corridor. Most of the time, they ignored him, but one was kind enough to throw him a piece of cheese (Merlin thanked her with a hearty meow and a gentle rub against her leg). Much better than Gwaine's miserable servant.

He was feeling pretty darn good about himself when he pranced into Gaius' quarters.

Then a wet rag hit him in the face.

"I spent two hours scrubbing that stain, so you can finish the job, cat or not!"

Merlin scowled at Gaius, but he took the rag between his teeth and tried not to gag on the taste as he dragged it along behind him. He jumped onto a chair, and then the table, where he could see what was left of his message. It was smeared, and there were little wells of ink that has sunk too far into the wood to come out, so all that could be read was:

"-_mate their numbers"._

'I should have stayed in Arthur's room,' he thought.

But he couldn't stand to leave without saying goodbye.

oOoOoOo

Merlin was almost finished with his job when there came a polite knock at the door. That, along with a faint whiff of lavender, made Merlin's ears perk up. He meowed as loudly as he could, calling to Gaius who was looking through the book of magic hidden in Merlin's room.

There was some thumping—Gaius no doubt hiding the book once more—and heavy footfalls before Gaius came down the stairs and swiftly opened the door.

"Gwen?"

She curtsied minutely. "I'm sorry if I disturbed you, I really didn't want to."

"Nonsense, I was merely-" Gaius glanced at Merlin, who quickly shuffled away from the wet, ink-stained rag. "I was trying to house train Merlin's new pet."

Merlin's felt the fur rise on his back. 'Next thing he'll be saying is I've gone to the tavern,' he thought darkly.

Gwen turned her curious brown eyes towards him, and Merlin forced himself to relax and look up as innocently as possible.

"She's sweet, isn't she?"

Gaius started choking on his laughter and Merlin's eyes widened. He looked the part of a cat insulted.

"Oh dear, I think I've offended her." Gwen reached out a hand for Merlin to sniff.

Merlin stared at it, then looked up at Gwen's open face. She was biting her lip, genuinely sorry for whatever she thought she had done. Merlin heaved an internal sigh, and gave her finger a quick lick.

Gwen laughed, surprised. "Where is Merlin anyway?"

"He went out this morning. I think he was in need of a drink at the local-"

Accidentally-on-purpose, Merlin shoved the bowl of soapy water off the edge of the table.

Gaius' eyebrows quirked up in that amused way, even as Gwen immediately bent down to get the bowl.

All traces of humour left his face when Gwen went silent.

"What is it?"

She would not look at him, so instead she stared into wide blue eyes. "I've come to get the supplies for Arthur's trip."

"I'm afraid I haven't prepared them yet. I thought he was to leave at dawn."

"Arthur was hoping to leave early, before dinner."

Merlin could see the reluctance in Gwen's eyes, and in that moment, he knew that she was aware of Arthur's plans to leave without Merlin.

"Is that why I was to keep Merlin busy? I did wonder." Gaius didn't wait for an answer, but instead went about gathering various herbs and potions.

Gwen finally looked up. "I told him it was silly. Merlin will never forgive him if he gets hurt. But-"

Merlin placed a paw on her arm.

'It's okay,' he willed her to understand.

She merely looked confused.

Gaius handed her the bag of supplies. "I often wish the boy would stay here," he said. Merlin stared at him, part defiance and part guilt. "Especially since he cannot fight." (Merlin knew Gaius wasn't referring to his physical ineptitude, but rather his current state of limited magic). "But he is brave, and Arthur needs him. Perhaps he will realize that after this trip."

Gwen was silent, but Merlin nodded his head, and leaped off the table.

It was Gaius' way of saying "be safe".

When Gwen left Gaius' chambers to bring Arthur the supplies after many thanks, Merlin trotted along after her. His padded paws made the journey silent, so Gwen only noticed him when she reached the open air of the courtyard and noticed the guards staring behind her.

She turned to see a black cat sitting patiently.

"Were you following me?"

Merlin nodded, which was clearly a mistake because the guards shifted their stance to point their weapons at him.

Gwen knocked them away. "Stop it, you're scaring her."

They backed off, but Merlin pressed a little closer to Gwen just in case. She looked at him fondly, then made her way down the steps to where Arthur and his knights were waiting.

"Guinevere, your timing is perfect," Arthur said.

Gwen did not smile. People had begun to gather around them, and their whispers were not so quiet that the knights could not hear.

"They wear no armour!"

"Where are the rest of them?"

"Merlin must be running late again."

Arthur's hands tightened around the reins of his horse. He nodded to his knights, and watched as the four swung up into their saddles.

Only four.

Arthur did not follow, but instead looked into worried brown eyes. He clasped Gwen's hands. "It will not be dangerous. We won't be fighting, only observing."

"It just doesn't feel right," Gwen admitted. "Especially without Merlin beside you."

Arthur let her hands fall. "I know."

He was about to turn away, when a little black ball of fuzz stepped out from behind Gwen's legs.

Arthur glared. "Go away!"

The cat shook its head.

As if it understood.

He gave it a pointed look, then finally pulled himself up on the saddle.

Something sharp latched onto his leg.

"Looks like Princess has a new friend."

The snickers of his knights—and, to Arthur's mortification, of the spectators and even Gwen—fuelled Arthur to shake his leg vigorously until the Gods-forsaken creature was flung away.

It rolled and landed in a heap right at Gwen's feet.

"Arthur!" She reached down and picked up the cat with all of the gentleness of a mother holding her newborn child. Arthur had the grace to look sheepish.

Until the cat _smirked_ at him.

"It's laughing at me!" he said.

Gwen turned the cat around, but when she looked into its wide, innocent blue eyes, she melted. "It's a cat, Arthur. She was probably just playing."

(Merlin groaned—he didn't need all of the knights thinking he was a girl!)

Leon placed a hand on Arthur's shoulder. "We need to leave, Sire."

Gwen looked straight into her prince's eyes. "Come back safe, Arthur."

Arthur nodded. He gave Gwen one last look of longing before urging his horse into a trot.

The cat began to squirm until it wiggled out of Gwen's arms and bolted after the unarmed knights.

Gwen watched it and her Prince leave. "What a strange girl," she thought aloud.

(Merlin's keen hearing picked up even that, though his manhood wished it hadn't.)

oOoOoOo

"I'm sorry, Sire. It seems to be stuck."

"Then get it unstuck!"

Five horses pawed restlessly at the ground, mirroring the mood of their riders.

One horse in particular caught sight of something in the corner of its eye, almost throwing Arthur off when it reared.

Arthur scrabbled to get control of the reins, and ran his hand gently down his horse's neck, calming him.

A screech rang through the air as the gate finally wrenched open.

The gatekeeper stared at it, bewildered. "I don't understand-" he began to say, but Arthur and his knights were already long gone.


	4. Catkin

**Warnings**: None! This is a safe, spoiler-free chapter!

**Words**: ~2,500

**Chapter Four: Catkin**

Gwaine raised an eyebrow to Elyan, who threw his hands up in defence and pointed instead to Percival, who merely nodded toward Leon.

Leon sighed.

He pressed his knees to his horse's sides and urged him forward until he was in line with Arthur's stallion.

Arthur stared ahead.

"Sire-"

"I know, I know. You want to stop."

"It will soon be too dark to see where we're going. If Merlin were here-"

Arthur shot him a look, and Leon shut up.

No one missed the cheerful prattle as much as Arthur.

"We'll make camp," he said after a moment. But instead of slowing, he urged his horse into a trot. Leon frowned, but he and the knights followed faithfully.

They came at last to a clearing, just as the sky was losing the last of the sunset's colours.

Arthur reined in his horse and wasted no time dismounting.

"Finally! We can eat!" Gwaine said. He had already dug into his pack and pulled out an apple.

"Is that all you think about?" Leon complained.

"Of course not." Elyan put an arm around Gwaine's shoulders. "He doesn't think about food nearly as much as he thinks about ale."

"Touché."

Gwaine shrugged him off. "At least I think, unlike some knights I know."

That earned him a glove to the head.

Arthur tried to smile, but he was acutely aware of the low quality of insults. He took down his supply pack, letting the horse relax. He tossed it to Percival, who raised an eyebrow.

"It's your turn to cook, mate," Gwaine told him.

"I can't cook," Percival said.

Of course, everyone knew that. None of the knights were particularly good at cooking, but by necessity, they all knew the basics. Percival was as good a cook as any-better, even, because there was always a subtle exotic flavour in his stew.

The men wordlessly split up to get firewood.

Percival heaved a sigh and opened the bag.

A little black head popped out.

Were he not a trained knight-and a grown man!-Percival might have shrieked. He let the bag drop heavily to the ground.

The creature mewled in protest.

"A cat?" Percival said softly.

He vaguely remembered a black cat latching onto Arthur's leg when they had set out from Camelot.

He squatted. "You're not supposed to be here, little Cat."

Slender whiskers twitched, and one large ear flicked back. Percival looked in that direction, where he could just make out the shape of Arthur.

Percival sighed, but he did not say anything more. He reached into the bag to find the vegetables, and the cat hopped out. It stretched languidly, until even Percival could hear the rustling of foliage as Elyan and Gwaine came back. Then the cat sent Percival one last look-'Don't say anything,' the eyes pleaded-and crawled back into the bag.

Percival closed the flap.

oOoOoOo

"Is it done yet?"

"If you ask one more time, Gwaine, you'll be on cooking duty for the rest of the trip," Leon said.

"You can't decide that. Only Princess can."

The four knights looked to Arthur, but he was silently poking the fire.

Percival reached into Arthur's bag, careful to keep the flap down, and pulled out the ladle.

"It's ready," he said.

Portions were doled out immediately. The moon was high and full, and with the help of the fire, it was easy enough to see.

That was how Gwaine noticed something sticking its head out of one of the bags.

He didn't say anything as the head turned towards him and he found himself staring into reflective blue eyes.

'Princess' pet?'

The other knights were engrossed in their food, so Gwaine picked out a piece of meat and flicked it in the cat's direction.

A paw darted out of the bag and skewered the meat. Then the cat and the meat disappeared back into the leather.

Gwaine grinned.

'This is going to be more fun than I thought.'

oOoOoOo

To everyone's surprise, Gwaine volunteered for clean-up duty.

Arthur looked at him as if he'd grown an extra head. "You want to lick the pot clean or what?"

Gwaine shrugged. "What can I say? Percival's cooking is just that good."

Percival snorted.

"If he wants to do it, I'm not going to complain," Elyan said.

Gwaine gathered the dishes and casually picked up Arthur's pack.

No one mentioned it, but Percival did send him a curious glance.

Gwaine made his hasty escape towards the river. He picked a patch of moonshine at the edge of the water, unobstructed by the changing leaves of the forest, and dumped everything.

A muffled meow made him wince. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking."

Merlin rolled his eyes and finally poked his head back out into the fresh night air. He had spent too many hours cramped in a bag with potatoes and dishes, so he seized the moment. He flopped to the ground and rolled around. The grass was almost spongy, and it seemed softer than his own bed. He stretched his paws and rolled his shoulders. Even his tail shook itself out.

Then he laid still and relaxed completely.

Gwaine chuckled. "Glad to be out? I'm surprised the Princess didn't realize you were in there."

'It's not a surprise,' Merlin thought, 'He's pretty oblivious on the best of days.'

They were far enough from the camp that Merlin's hearing could only pick up tones and voices, instead of words. But in the dark of the night, his eyesight was proving exactly how useful it could be. He could see every blade of grass on the other side of the river. He watched as an owl spread its wings and settled down on its branch. The dark wasn't a problem-though the colour of everything was all but gone, the crispness was near perfect.

He was startled out of his inspection of his new world when a bowl was placed in front of him.

He looked up at Gwaine.

"You're too thin, Cat. No need to waste leftovers."

Merlin's tail flicked and swatted Gwaine in the leg. Even as a cat, people insisted on pointing out Merlin's scrawniness. Nonetheless, he licked that bowl clean, savouring the new taste that Percival's cooking seemed to have because of his enhanced sense of smell.

Gwaine sat down and started to wash the dish that Merlin had finished, so Merlin moved on to the next one.

"You can't hide forever," Gwaine said.

Merlin wiped his paw across his mouth to get rid of any stew that was staining his fur.

"But if you want to try, you're welcome to hide in my bag."

And so, even as a cat, Merlin and Gwaine became fast friends.

oOoOoOo

Merlin should have been asleep, but he had managed to sleep for the majority of their ride, so he found himself wide awake. Gwaine's pack was more cramped than Arthur's had been, even though Gwaine had arranged his spare blanket into a makeshift bed for him.

Merlin concentrated his hearing.

He picked apart the different rhythms of breathing until he had distinguished five sets, all deep and steady. With a grin, he clambered out of the bag and made his way to the dying embers of the fire-even with his fur, the night was cold, and a travelling pack was not made for insulation.

He curled up and tucked his paws under him to keep them warm. Suddenly, he was a little more tired than he thought. The fire was so warm against his side. It wouldn't hurt to lay there for a little longer. He would move long before morning came.

He was still thinking that when he was roughly awakened by a boot sending him sailing across the clearing.

He landed in a heap. Again. He was starting to think that his plan had been horrible from the beginning.

"Did I kill you?"

Merlin blinked. Elyan's worried face swam into view.

The sun was already peaking above the distant horizon, which meant Elyan was coming in from guard, and Merlin's nap had turned into a decent night's sleep.

It also meant that Arthur would be up in a matter of minutes.

Merlin scrambled to his feet and darted back into Gwaine's sack. He poked his head out and stared up at Elyan imploringly.

The knight's confusion melted away, replaced by adoration.

(Merlin couldn't know that his large ears and wide innocent eyes were the undoing of any human being with a soul).

"If Gwen liked you, then you can't be _that_ dangerous," Elyan reasoned.

Merlin grinned—the corners of his mouth quirked upwards, and his high cheekbones made his eyes a little smaller—and pulled the flap down to encase him in darkness.

Elyan, having grown up around stray cats, was a little bewildered.

He was sure he'd never seen a cat do that.

With a little shrug to himself, he went to nudge Arthur awake. "Sire, the sun's come up."

From his vantage point in Gwaine's bag, Merlin watched as Arthur all but sprang into full alert. Unlike when Merlin had to wake him up in the mornings amidst the safety of his castle.

Arthur stood quickly. He gave Elyan a nod of thanks, and then disappeared into the trees, in the direction of the stream.

The other knights began to stir as well, and it wasn't long before Merlin was once again being jostled by the steady rhythm of a horse.

oOoOoOo

They continued until the sun was high and their shadows short. Merlin drifted in and out of sleep, listening to the familiar banter of the knights. Arthur was strangely silent, even when Gwaine's incessant chattering became so annoying that Percival nearly pushed him right off his horse.

When Arthur finally spoke, it was only to issue a command to hunt quickly.

Merlin's keen hearing kept track of Gwaine's movements. He was startled by how clearly he could hear something as insignificant as the grinding of the reins as Gwaine tied his horse. All of a sudden, there was a whoosh of air and Merlin's hiding spot erupted into brightness.

Gwaine was grinning down at him. "Figured you'd want to stretch your legs," he said. Then he scooped Merlin out of the bag and placed him on the ground.

A rush of adrenaline made Merlin's tail start flicking back and forth. Yes, it was wonderful to be back on steady ground! He gave Gwaine a quick nudge of thanks and took off into the trees, following the whistling of a songbird.

He found his prey in the boughs of a large oak. There was an instinct, nearly as deep as his own magic, that gave him the push to run right up the tree. His claws dug in easily, so it was as simple as if he were walking-maybe even simpler, since there was nothing to trip him on a tree trunk. He raced up until he reached the first tree limbs. He found himself a cat-sized seat and looked down to the ground that was so far below.

The exhilaration was enough to make him climb even higher.

The little blue bird watched him warily, but it did not fly away, not even as Merlin reached it's perch.

'Why aren't you afraid?' Merlin wondered.

He nearly fell out of the tree when a tiny voice answered him. 'You're not a hawk, or a snake.'

'But I'm a cat!'

The bird cocked her head to the side. 'You don't look like a cat. They're bigger, with teeth as long as I am.'

Merlin's fur bristled, but he only turned his head away.

There was a gentle trill of laughter as the bird leaped into the air and spread her wings to catch the wind. She swooped down by Merlin's ears, and her wing brushed his fur with the gentleness of a breath, before taking off into the open sky.

Merlin looked after her with longing, imagining the feeling of flight.

He turned to go back down-the knights might already be heading out again!-but suddenly the ground looked miles away. He tried to climb down butt-first, but every time he unhooked the claws of one paw to find purchase lower down, his claws couldn't dig into the bark deep enough to support his weight. He quickly climbed back upward and huddled on the branch.

Next, he crouched down as if to jump to the nearest limb below him, but the wind picked up and his stomach dropped.

Imagine if he couldn't grab hold! What a long, painful fall that would be.

He urged his magic out and pulled the branches closer to him, but the tree quickly groaned with the strain and the branches never came close enough for him to reach.

He howled with despair.

The sound of a body crashing through foliage seemed far away, but Merlin focused on it. He howled again, making his voice as low and guttural as his cat body would allow it to go.

The sounds grew louder.

He stared intently in their direction, until he could see the figure weaving through the trees.

Leon.

With one last pathetic howl, Merlin finally got Leon to look up at his spot in the branches.

The knight's brows creased, but he laid his bow and quiver by the base of the tree, and pulled out his dagger. He stabbed it into the tree as a handhold, and slowly made his way up.

For just a moment, Merlin swore he could hear the whisperings of discomfort from the tree itself.

Leon was many branches lower than Merlin, but it was already bending under the knight's weight. He could climb no higher.

"If you want to get down, cat, you'll have to come to me," he said.

Merlin shook his head.

Leon sighed. "If you were the cat of a sorcerer, surely you would have more courage than this." He reached for the next branch, but even as he shifted, the one he was resting on gave an ominous crack.

Merlin had no choice-he leaned over his branch and looked down at Leon. 'Don't you dare drop me!' he growled. Slowly, he turned around and clung desperately to the branch as he lowered himself as far as he could.

He hung there for a breathless moment, gathering the courage to pull his claws back in and let himself drop. A whoosh of air ruffled the fur on his back as the same blue bird from before soared past him.

'Fly, little cat!'

Merlin let go.

The breathless feeling of falling seemed to last forever, and it was proceeded by an equally unpleasant breathless feeling of having the wind knocked clean out of him when he finally slammed into Leon's waiting arms.

He was still trying to breath when the knight finally touched down on the ground.

"If you bring trouble to us, I will not hesitate to kill you," Leon warned.

Merlin had a hard time taking the warning seriously when Leon tucked his small body into his tunic, and carried him back to the horses.

Merlin felt his hopes of being a successful spy slipping away-in just two days of travel, the only person unaware of his presence was Arthur.

* * *

><p><strong>AN**: Three weeks... that's rather too long for an update. Sorry :( I'll try to be faster with the next one (only partly because it has a lot more Arthur/Kitten!Merlin interaction, and I love writing that!). Hope you enjoyed it! And thanks to everyone who favourited/alerted/reviewed-you make my day!

~Neko


	5. Caterwaul

Warnings: none

Words: ~1,300 (I'm sorry T_T I usually try for longer chapters)

**Chapter Five: Caterwaul**

Something wasn't right.

Merlin cautiously poked his head out of Gwaine's bag. The night air was still and silent. The clouds were obscuring the meagre light of the moon, but Merlin could see as well as always.

Nothing seemed out of place.

Gwaine was snoring. Percival was sitting up against a tree, but quite obviously asleep. Elyan's bag and threadbare blanket were left lying out, which meant he was once again on the night watch. And Arthur-

Merlin's eyes narrowed.

He climbed out of the bag and stretched until all of his limbs popped into place, then made his way over to his prince.

Arthur's breathing was not deep and even. Though he lay perfectly still, his knuckles were white from the way he clutched the hilt of his sword. Sweat was beginning to bead on his forehead, and there was no peace in his features.

Merlin sighed silently-it wasn't the first time Arthur had a nightmare.

He opened his mouth the say the spell he'd learned for this exact reason, and then his tired mind realized it would be useless. He couldn't use any spells in a cat's body.

His mouth snapped shut.

He watched Arthur's grip tighten impossibly further.

It was no use-he couldn't stand to watch a friend suffer in silence. He inched closer to Arthur's head. He took a deep breath and swiped a paw out to whack his nose, and then darted back as quickly as possible. His heart hammered, but to Merlin's exasperation, Arthur did nothing more than scrunch his face up in discomfort.

Merlin scowled. 'How is it that you wake up when a rabbit steps on a leaf, but you completely ignore me?'

He went back to Arthur's side and tried again, but it was useless. So Merlin climbed right on top of his prince's chest. He stomped around with his tiny, padded paws, but still, Arthur hardly twitched.

'Wake up, you lazy git!'

Arthur made a noise of annoyance and swatted at Merlin's head. Then he settled back into a deep sleep. To Merlin's amazement, his hand loosened its grip on the sword, and his features smoothed out. The hand that had swatted Merlin was currently resting on his back, trapping Merlin where he was. He tried to wiggle out from under it, but the hand pressed down a little harder.

Merlin rolled his eyes, but he tucked his paws into a more comfortable position and closed his eyes. If it kept the nightmare away, then he could deal with his change in sleeping arrangements.

Besides, Arthur was a lot warmer than Gwaine's bag.

oOoOoOo

The morning rays were finally bright enough to filter through the leaves of overhead trees and interrupt Arthur's peaceful sleep. He frowned, but for once, he felt completely rested, so he had no excuse to try to sleep any longer. Besides, they were less than a day from their targets, and he wanted to get there in time to set up for the night and plan their infiltration.

With these warm and fuzzy thoughts in mind, he opened his eyes and stretched his arms, trying to relieve the constriction in his chest.

He found himself staring into Leon's wide eyes.

"It's not polite to stare," Arthur grumbled.

"Sorry, sire," Leon said. His voice was faint. In fact, if Arthur looked closely, he could see that Leon's face was nearly white.

Arthur's brows creased in concern despite himself. "You're not getting sick, are you? We can't afford that now."

Leon shook his head, mute.

Arthur's gaze travelled past Leon, where Elyan was standing at the edge of their clearing, completely frozen.

He looked over to Percival, who was watching him with a clearly guarded expression.

He looked to Gwaine.

He, of course, was still snoring in a blissfully ignorant sleep.

Arthur sat up quickly. Suddenly, the constriction in his chest was gone, but something landed in his lap and let out a noise of protest.

Ever so slowly, Arthur looked down.

Sluggishly, two crystalline blue eyes slid open and blinked owlishly up at him. A bushy tail twitched lazily, and tiny daggers of teeth were revealed as the creature let out a giant yawn.

The creature that looked an awful lot like the sorcerer's cat.

Arthur grabbed it and tossed it as far away as he could from his sitting position.

The cat howled, but twisted mid-air and landed perfectly on its feet.

Then stumbled backward into a tree.

It was definitely the same cat from the castle.

"Why was there a cat sleeping with me," Arthur all but growled out.

Gwaine snorted and rolled over, finally roused from his sleep. "What are you complaining about now, Princess?" His eyes were still closed. It looked almost as if he were talking in his sleep.

Arthur stood up and stalked over to the black kitten. It shrunk in on itself, but to Arthur's amazement, it didn't run.

"Sire," Leon began, "It's only a cat. Surely it is not dangerous-"

"How did it follow us? We were on horses!"

Leon shut his mouth.

Arthur's angered breathing was the only sound in the forest, until Percival said, "He didn't follow us. He was hiding in your bag."

Arthur's eyes widened, and he looked back to the cat, who was no longer cowering at all. In fact, it's tail was held high and there was an all-knowing smirk present. Arthur drew his sword, but before he'd so much as point it in the cat's direction, something hit him in the back of the head.

He turned to glare murderously at Gwaine, who was only wearing one shoe.

"I could have you executed for that!"

"Don't get your knickers in a bunch. I'm trying to stop you from getting yourself killed," Gwaine said.

"By hitting me with your boot?"

"I would hate to tell Gwen you tried to kill an innocent kitten that she clearly adores."

Arthur's glare could have brought down all of Camelot, but he sheathed his sword and stomped over to his bed.

"We're leaving," he said.

"Sire, what about breakfast-"

Arthur whipped around to give Leon _the look_. "I said we're leaving. Eat on the way."

The knights scrambled into action, leaving a wide-eyed kitten staring up at them, hurt.

Merlin couldn't believe that Arthur was going to leave him behind, _again_! Never mind that he was currently a suspicious looking black cat that was sleeping on his chest mere minutes before. Couldn't the prat be grateful for once?

But no, Arthur and his knights were all facing him from high upon their horses. Gwaine looked apologetic, and Elyan had given him one last rub on the head, but in the end, at Arthur's signal, they started off at a canter.

Arthur alone glared down at Merlin.

Merlin glared right back up at him.

'I'll follow you, you know,' he wanted to say.

"If I see you again, I will kill you."

Merlin rolled his eyes.

For a second, a streak of recognition flitted through Arthur's eyes, but then he flicked the reins and disappeared after the knights.

Merlin shook his head free of the dirt that had rained down on him.

'He just has to make things difficult, doesn't he.'

oOoOoOo

Arthur had no intentions of slowing down.

None of the knights tried to convince him. Between his murderous eyes and the dangerous pace that he drove his stallion forward at, it would be a death wish to protest, so they kept their mouths shut.

Leon didn't mention their horses' ragged breaths.

Gwaine didn't mention how quickly they were approaching enemy territory.

Percival didn't mention the noise they making as they crashed through the forest.

Elyan didn't mention the strange pattern of fallen leaves up ahead, which had fallen in a tight group compared to the surrounding forest bed.

So it was, in their passionate silence, that they galloped across the leaves at full speed, and didn't realize they were falling until Elyan's horse whinnied in pure fright, and they crashed into a heap far below ground level.

Caught like wild animals.

.

* * *

><p>AN: There is no excuse for not updating in two months u.u Especially since this chapter ended up a little shorter than usual. However, it's possible that you'll have to wait another month for the next one, because June is Camp NaNoWriMo (they have a website!). I'll try to get another chapter in during the month, of course, but NaNoWriMo's always trap me.


	6. Catnapped

**Warnings**: None! Well, maybe a bit of blood...

**Words**: ~2,400

**Chapter Six: Catnapped**

"Leon."

"Yes sire?"

"We're trapped."

"Yes, sire."

"In a hole."

"Indeed, sire."

"Oh, did Princess finally wake up?"

Gwaine's infuriatingly cheery voice drifted down. Even though it should have been faded with distance, it instead echoed mercilessly, until Arthur had to clench his hands around his shirt to stop them from covering his ears like a child.

He looked up.

The sun must have been well into the sky, because it cast sufficient light to show Gwaine's devilish grin. Arthur's gaze travelled down to where Elyan was grimacing, a shimmer of sweat coating his forehead.

"Quit kicking me in the head!"

Elyan received another whack to his cheek as a reply.

Farther down, Percival stood as steady as a rock.

He offered Arthur a weak smile. "Afternoon, sire."

Arthur blinked. "Right. Good afternoon."

The ladder of knights swayed dangerously when Percival chuckled.

"Can't you grow a little, Elyan? I can almost reach the edge!"

There was a muted huff. "I'm not a bean stock, idiot."

Arthur pushed himself off the ground. The world went dark around the edges—at least, dark_er—_and Arthur put a hand against the rock wall behind him until it cleared.

His brows furrowed. Something wasn't right...

"It's unnatural," Leon said suddenly.

He was staring knowingly at Arthur, eyes dark against unusually pale skin.

"What do you mean?"

"The hole. It wasn't created by any animal or force of nature."

Arthur considered this, absently running his fingers along rock that was perfectly smooth. "You think someone dug this out?"

"I can think of no tools that could do a job this large, let alone straight through rock."

"What are you suggesting?"

They both knew the answer, but Leon said nothing more. It was true—their prison was a large one, with room enough for at least a dozen to sleep comfortably. With five people and four horses, it was less comfortable but hardly unbearable.

Except that the horses were piled to one side, and it wouldn't be long before their corpses began to rot.

"They broke our fall," Leon explained upon seeing Arthur's transfixed stare. "Gwaine's got away, but we were not so lucky. Most had shattered legs."

Arthur looked at his stallion.

"Broken neck. At least he didn't suffer," Leon said.

It was a small comfort.

"Ow—Gwaine! You can't stand on top of my head!"

"I just need a little more... got it!"

Arthur followed the human ladder up to where he could just make out Gwaine's fingers curling over the edge of the hole.

"Alright Elyan, now you just have to jump."

There was a snort, but Elyan's argument was cut short when a shadow was cast over them.

The shadow became a head, which became a body, and Arthur reached for a sword that was no longer at his side.

"You think we'd let you escape?"

With a sickening crunch that should never have reached all the way to Arthur, Gwaine's fingers were crushed and he fell backward. Elyan tried to steady him, but instead the momentum dragged him down too until all three were in a heap, choking on the dirt they raised.

"I'll kill him!" Gwaine swore the moment he had the breath.

The man in question bared his teeth in some form of grin.

"You'd have to reach me first."

oOoOoOo

Merlin was fuming. He stomped across the forest floor in the direction of what he hoped was the musty scent of sweaty knights rather than the musty scent of a wild boar. He had given up running after he'd tripped over the fourth tree root and nearly fell off a small cliff.

Now, he was slamming his (tiny) paws down with as much force as he possibly could, just to make a point.

Rabbits didn't even give him a second glance.

'Stupid prat has a stupid horse, and he expects me to keep up?'

Well... no... that was the point... but still!

To make matters worse, the sun was nearing its peak in the sky, which meant that Merlin—and his long black fur—was being roasted alive.

It was hard to believe he was _cold_ last night.

His stomach rumbled, but he didn't have the heart to hunt down a rabbit. The last time he tried, it had laid frozen beneath his paws, pulse thrumming so fast that Merlin worried it would have a heart attack, and a terrified voice in his head saying "Help!" over and over and over-

Arthur was going to _pay._

Merlin was lost in his thoughts of what he would do to the prince when he caught up, until his keen hearing picked up the sound of a twig snapping. Merlin froze.

He could smell musk and pine, and the metal of blood. The wind rustled the fallen leaves, but not enough to drown out a heady growl that was all anticipation and no fear.

Merlin turned as slowly and silently as he could, and found himself staring up into ravenous yellow eyes, and a muzzle stained with blood.

'You don't want to eat me too,' Merlin said. It came out lower than his usual mews, and the wolf's eyes glinted with understanding.

'Fear,' it growled. It bared its teeth in a grotesque grin. 'Delicious.'

There was no better warning for Merlin to duck away from the dagger-like claws that slashed at his head. He swiped out instinctively, drawing a furious yelp as he caught the wolf across the nose, then bolted for the nearest tree and scrambled up.

Not fast enough.

Merlin's back seared in a fire that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun. He was torn from the trunk and sent sailing into a rock, and this time, he didn't land on his feet.

The wolf's muzzle was no longer only stained—it was dripping.

'That's mine,' Merlin realized, dazed. His back throbbed with every beat of his heart, but the pain had already spread well beyond that. Not even his tail was spared.

The instincts of a cat faded just enough that when the wolf lunged at his throat for the kill, Merlin tore an entire bough of a nearby tree down on its head. The warmth of magic sent a euphoria through him even stronger than the adrenaline, and pushed the pain back.

'I am not your food!' Merlin said, his meows a mix of annoyance and nerves. His magic surged forth to prove his point, and another tree limb crashed in front of the wolf's nose.

It cowered back with its tail curved between its legs. Like all animals, the wolf had sensed the power behind a warlock's instincts. And unlike many animals, it was intelligent enough to know it had become the prey. It snarled, but did not lunge.

Merlin dragged himself to his four paws.

'Unnatural!'

The voice in Merlin's head was much clearer than before, and decidedly female.

'Unnatural,' she repeated, 'A threat! Why are you here?' She bared her bloody teeth as if to attack, but one wisp of magic made her flinch back.

'I'm...' Merlin's mew broke off as the pain flared warningly. The copper smell of blood in the air was overriding his other senses. He tried again. 'I'm looking for someone. Humans.'

'Humans do not belong in my forest,' the she-wolf growled.

'I tell them that all the time, but they never listen,' Merlin joked weakly.

The wolf's eyes narrowed, but her ears went back. 'You are strange. Not wolf. Not prey. Not human.'

As the blood rushing in his ears began to drown out his own thoughts, Merlin slumped back against the rock. He vaguely wondered if Kilgharrah would still obey him if he meowed.

'If I help, will the humans leave?'

Merlin's eyes snapped back open—when had he closed them?-to see the wolf's muzzle closing around his neck. His magic nearly hurled itself at her, until he realized that she was moving so cautiously that he could have escaped even half-conscious.

'What are you doing?' he asked.

The skin on the back of his neck pulled tight, but not painfully, until he was suddenly airborne.

He was fading too fast to realize he was being cat-napped.

oOoOoOo

For nearly an hour, five knights were forced to sit patiently in a hole while they listened to a pair of voices failing to decide their fate.

"We don't have room for five," one said. It was the same man who had shattered Gwaine's hand.

Another voice, lower in volume but not in pitch, wasn't clear enough for the knights to make out.

Gwaine cursed.

Elyan smacked a hand over Gwaine's mouth, even when the action pulled at his body full of bruises. "Shut up," he hissed.

"They're nothing but commoners! The Lady won't care one way or another about them!"

A quick retort.

"They can't talk if they're dead."

A series of mumbles and half-heard words later, the man all but yelled, "No I'm not suggesting we eat them!"

This continued for many minutes more, until the sun was beginning to retreat from their hole. Then, finally, the second person's head peered over the edge. A few near-silent words were said, and even though they carried easily, none of the knights could make sense of them until suddenly ropes were snaking down and twisting around their bodies.

"They're sorcerers!" Elyan exclaimed.

"Gee, I hadn't guessed. Who else could have trapped us here?" The sarcasm in Gwaine's tone might have been caused in part by the rope that made his britches ride up in a most uncomfortable fashion.

He didn't even get reprieve when they were lifted into the air and deposited in a heap at the two men's feet.

Or rather, one man and one short-haired woman.

There was a chorus of groans as Gwaine flashed his most charming smile. "Not even your rugged, manly look could disguise such inner beauty."

oOoOoOo

Merlin only woke from his deep unconsciousness because he was dumped onto the ground. As he brought his vision into focus, his nose twitched.

'Arthur?'

'Humans,' the she-wolf confirmed. There was tension in every lithe muscle of her body.

Merlin peeked around the tree, and his heart stuttered.

'How is it that I'm gone for half a day and they get all get themselves trapped?'

The wolf stared blankly.

Merlin retreated back into the cat instincts and its voice. 'Can you scare them off?' He asked.

The wolf bared her teeth. 'You are a thorn in the paw!' She snapped at the air above Merlin's head, but when Merlin didn't even flinch, she growled and stalked out of the trees.

'Swear you will leave, non-human, and take that filth with you!'

The loud growl startled the group of knights and captors, but Merlin merely nodded, and located all of the nearby rocks and fallen branches.

Just in case.

oOoOoOo

"What was that noise?"

"I'm sure it was nothing," Arthur told Elyan.

"It was merely the sound of this strange-haired woman's unyielding passion for me."

"I take it back, we should have left them to die!"

The man smirked. "I told you they were useless."

The woman kicked Gwaine away from her. "Even so, the Lady would not be pleased if there are people so close."

"That's why if they're dead-"

"The bodies, Harris! They tend to attract attention!"

"That's right we do, so you might as well let us go-" Gwaine was cut off by another kick.

Arthur's eyes flashed. "If it is a matter of ransom, I assure you it will be paid."

"As if you peasants are worth anything. We should have left you down there."

Harris patted her arm in mock consolation. "You were the one who didn't want to make the hole deeper."

"Get your hand off-" The woman stopped mid-sentence, eyes trained on a spot behind the pile of battered knights.

In the sudden silence, it was impossible to mistake the throaty growl of wolf on the attack.

The woman slowly grinned. "We'll be rid of them after all."

"Tell me that's your stomach, Percival," Leon said softly.

"I did miss breakfast."

Arthur scowled. "It's not my fault you lot decided to feed the sorcerer's cat!"

Harris had retreated into the surrounding forest already, but the woman stayed just long enough to smirk at Gwaine. "I'd love to stay and watch you be torn limb from limb, but I'll have to settle for imagining it."

"Love you too, sweetheart."

The woman's face went red, and she raised a hand as if to strike him, until the wolf breached the cover of trees.

The woman disappeared after her companion.

"Leon, could you breathe a little farther from my neck?"

"Actually, I'm tied over here."

Elyan groaned.

The knights all shifted in place until they were facing the beast, except for Elyan who was trying to pretend the breeze on the back of his neck was nothing but a very late summer wind.

"Nice dog," Percival said gently. The wolf turned away from Elyon to stare him down.

"Well mates, its been fun," Gwaine said through a grin.

Then, out of the trees came a sad excuse for a kitten, half walking, half dragging its body toward them. It gave one pitiful hiss, and the wolf stopped growling. Another hiss had the beast backing up.

"I don't believe it," Arthur said.

The cat turned to hiss at him too, before placing itself firmly between the heap of humans and the bloodthirsty wolf. It bowed its head slightly, and the wolf did the same, then turned and ran back into the thick of the forest.

Now the knights found themselves faced with a glare that could easily rival the woman and wolf combined.

Gwaine ducked his head shamefully. "Sorry for leaving you."

The cat's tail twitched.

"I am as well," said Percival.

"Me too."

"And I."

Blue eyes stared unblinking at Arthur.

"I'm not sorry in the least!"

But the regret shining in Arthur's eyes when he noticed the blood on the kitten's back was clear as day.

Finally, the kitten wriggled between Leon and Arthur and dragged out Arthur's dagger, placing it so gently in Arthur's hand that he wasn't even nicked.

"This is definitely not a normal cat," Elyan said.

The cat gave a tired smirk.

* * *

><p>AN: Sorry for the ridiculously long wait for those of you who were reading this before. I'll try not to let it happen again. On the bright side, the next season comes out in less than two weeks! I'm very excited (my friends haven't had a break from my impatience since last Christmas!)


	7. Catalyst

**Warnings:** ...a poor attempt at description? No spoilers or swearing or slash, though.

**Words:** ~3,500 

**Chapter Seven: Catalyst**

"If we walk back, we'll be lucky to make it within a fortnight."

"At least we can be sure that we'd make it at all."

"Assuming the wolves don't get us."

At Gwaine's reminder, a tense silence drowned them, as each listened to the night sounds. There was little to be heard above the crackle of their fire, but they drew in closer all the same.

A little black cat murmured its discomfort, then tucked its head between its paws and was still.

Elyan resumed his argument, saying, "We're injured enough without hunting down sorcerers."

"That's _why_ we need to go forward." Gwaine gestured wildly in the direction of Leon's splinted leg. "How do you expect _him_ to walk back to Camelot?"

Elyan opened his mouth as if he had an answer, but snapped it back shut with a scowl.

Leon frowned. "As a knight, it is your duty to leave me behind if it means protecting our kingdom. I will follow alone, as quickly as I can."

"You're no harder to carry than a pack of supplies," Percival said, "Whether we turn back or go forward, you're coming with us."

"No, Gwaine had a point," Arthur said.

The statement was met with four gaping mouths.

"You can't seriously mean to go on without Leon?" was the general consensus.

Arthur held up a hand. "Leon will stay here, and one of us with him, while the rest of us go forward. That was the purpose of our leaving."

All eyes fell on Gwaine's bandaged hand. It would be useless in a fight—possibly useless for the rest of his life, but no one wanted to face that dreary future. The most logical choice would be to leave Gwaine behind with Leon.

After a moment of contemplative silence, Elyan stood and kicked open his bedroll. "Since I was the only one who thought to bring bandages, I can't possibly leave Leon to suffer in your idiot hands." He met the relief in Gwaine's eyes with a half smile. "I'll stay."

"Good man," Arthur said.

No knight _wanted_ to stay behind and wait while his friends walked into danger.

"What about the cat?" Leon asked out of the blue. As one, five heads turned to stare at the fluffball curled up contentedly in Arthur's lap.

"She stays," said Percival.

Arthur raised an eyebrow.

Percival crossed his arms. "No need to put her in danger."

"You're lucky she's not awake to hear that," Gwaine said.

Arthur ran his finger over the pristine white bandages. He'd insisted on bandaging the thing himself, including each of its worn paws. The distance they'd covered on horseback, a tiny kitten had been made to cover on foot.

Arthur, looking for all the world like a guilty child, shoved Gwaine in the direction of the trees. "Go stand guard."

Gwaine rolled his eyes and stood to do as he was told while the others settled down for one last night in peace.

oOoOoOo

If not for the distant hoot of an owl, Merlin would have slept straight through the night. Instead, he tumbled out of the bedroll and scrambled to his feet, miraculously not waking Arthur in the process.

That was two hours ago.

For two hours, he'd had to carefully distinguish the heady smell of dying embers from the rustier scent of pine tree smoke. Now, as the pine trees became sparse and the ground rocky, the pine smoke was making burning his sensitive nose and overwhelming all other scents.

In the waning light of the moon, his sharp vision allowed him to make out the edges of a column of smoke, but it rose from nowhere. There was no village, no castle, not even a log cabin. The smoke was coming from the ground itself.

Merlin padded warily closer, but his eyes watered and his senses got hazy.

'There's no way I'm jumping into _that_,' Merlin thought.

Then he shoved his face to the ground.

For once, this wasn't because someone oblivious had stepped on him. He pressed his ear to the ground. The awkward angle tugged at his already aching back, but he ignored it and started shuffling sideways. Then he paused. Then shuffled some more. Pause. Shuffle.

There.

The faintest hint of a sound. It was more than just the gentle breeze tossing about fallen leaves, or the forest night life. It was the sound of metal striking metal, easy to pick out because of the sheer unnaturalness.

He shuffled a little closer to the sound, and closer, and closer-

"Hoot!"

Every hair on his body stood on end and he jumped to his feet. His tail arched of its own volition.

Another hoot sounded, right next to his ears, and the magnitude of the noise made his head ring.

He glared at the owl through his watery vision. 'Don't do that!'

The owl, though it didn't have a mouth capable of grinning, still managed to look smug. It was a tawny thing, with feathers sticking out where his ears would be, and clear yellow eyes. They were stopped just below a low hanging pine branch, and the moonlight barely filtered through. Merlin's night vision could distinguish that the owl was speckled with some darker colour, and that his stomach was light, but he couldn't say what those colours were.

The owl hooted again, _right in his face_, then hopped back when Merlin swiped at it.

'Seriously! What did I do to you?'

His only answer was a soft whistle of sound.

Slowly, his fur settled back to his normal fluff. 'You can't talk?'

The owl's head cocked to the side.

'Can you understand what I'm saying? Am I even saying anything?' It was hard to tell when his words were only in his head. He hardly noticed his own meows now.

Again, the owl hooted, but Merlin couldn't tell if this was a yes or just a noise.

'You better not be thinking of eating me.' Merlin narrowed his eyes, as if it would reveal all of the owl's secrets. The owl hopped back another step, and a beam of unhindered moonlight fell right across the tufted head, revealing a ruffle of silver feathers.

Silver. Not grey, but silver. Compared to the shades of grey that the owl was painted in, the silver stood out unnaturally bright.

Like Merlin's own eyes when he stared at his reflection.

'You're magic!'

In a sudden flurry of feathers, the owl took off into the night, and began screeching for all its worth. Merlin pressed his front paws over his ears, but he still felt as if he was the clapper in a giant bell.

When the ringing in Merlin's head subsided enough that he could look up, he was met with an assortment of pointed objects.

"Wha—It's a cat!"

Merlin followed the voice past a butcher's knife and up to the speaker's face. It was a young man, maybe three years older than Merlin himself. His clothes were simple—he'd go unnoticed in Ealdor, but for the fine cloak draped over his shoulders. A quick scan of his three comrades revealed the same: they were hardly more than the average person.

Morgana was using _peasants_.

"More of a kitten, really," an older man said. A pitchfork nudged the bandages on Merlin's back. "Looks like it's not a stranger to human hands."

Merlin scowled at him, then at each of the other three faces for good measure.

"What do we do with it?"

Pitchfork-man shrugged. "No one gave us any orders about how to deal with a needy kitten setting off the alarm."

Merlin was about to swat the man with a low hanging pine branch to show just how much he appreciated being called needy when the youngest of them scooped Merlin up and cuddled him protectively to his chest. Merlin eyed the cooking knife that was loosely grasped in the boy's other hand.

"We can't leave it out here. Judith said there are wolves out!"

"You've been mingling with those magic folk again, Chalen?"

Merlin felt the warmth emanate from the boy's chest, followed by a deep intake of breath, but pitchfork-man didn't wait for a reply. He turned on the spot and marched forward to the right of the smoke. The other three followed—and Merlin by accessory—until in front of Merlin's very keen vision, pitchfork-man vanished.

Before his own ride disappeared into nothingness as well, Merlin glanced over the boy's shoulder.

The silver-capped owl raised a wing.

Blackness swallowed the owl whole. Merlin dug his claws in subconsciously, but the boy's yelp of discomfort reminded him that he was still staring backward. He turned to face torch-lit stone steps.

"You should stay away from _them_," said the man now only loosely gripping his rake. "You don't want to end up like John."

"Who's John?"

"Exactly."

They reached the end of the stairs. Merlin's eyes focused easily in the semi-lit interior that opened up to them.

There was every manner of runic circle that he had ever seen. At the heart of each circle, there was an otherwise ordinary item. The closest was a quill made from a simple pheasant's feather. There was no one standing near that circle. In fact, though the chamber was large enough to fit Uther's entire council, there was only three other people. They all stood huddled at the back, surrounding what Merlin could barely make out as a hair brush. Two wore cheap peasant's clothing, while the third had distinctly fancier robes.

They all wore the same cloak draped over their backs, touched just enough by the wall torches that Merlin could tell they were purple.

The boy deviated from his companions, heading toward a stone doorway. Merlin glanced back at the strange runes-senseless even to him-before turning all of his attention to their destination.

He had to gather intel, after all.

"Oi, Chalen! What'd you drag in this time?"

Merlin and the boy both turned to the voice. It belonged to a burly man, with almost as much hair on his face as Merlin had on his entire cat body. Through the moustache and beard, there was a hint of a smirk, but the man's eyes were kind.

Chalen shifted uncomfortably. "The wolves are out again, and it's really cold, so I was wondering..."

When the boy left his request hanging, the man laughed. The sheer volume of it echoed around the chamber. "You're lucky I'm not on cooking duty tonight, or that thing would be _mighty_ warm." At Merlin's glare, the man's smirk grew more prominent. "What is it, anyway?"

Merlin was hoisted into the air, his back paws left to dangle.

The man and all of his whiskers bent down to stare right into Merlin's eyes. The eyes were dark-some shade of brown, though which Merlin would never know-and they were suspicious. It didn't suit the joking manner from seconds ago, though the boy didn't seem to notice.

A large finger prodded him right on his collar bone, and Merlin squirmed vigorously until he was free, and dropped to the ground.

Only to be caught mid-air by the giant himself.

"I doubt this thing will make a good mouser," the man said, not a tone of jest left in his voice. "There would be no sense in us feeding it."

"I can share my food. It'll hardly need more than a chunk of meat!"

"And if _they_ find it?"

Merlin glanced back at the boy when there was no answer. He was biting his lip, looking at Merlin forlornly.

"Judith said we didn't need any more animal sacrifices."

The man snorted, but let Merlin down all the same. He gave him quick pat on the back that had enough force to send Merlin sprawling to the ground. He scrambled back to his paws and shook out the dust.

The hint of a smirk was back on the man's face. "Tell you what, if it turns up in here once a day, I'll make sure it gets food."

A little pinch of guilt tugged at Merlin's heart when he saw how grateful the boy was for this service, since Merlin had no intention of being around in a day's time. The guilt remained until the boy had left, at which point Merlin's attention was instead focused on the fact that he was alone in a room full of sharp cooking utensils with a burly giant.

He stared defiantly up into those dark eyes, and the man raised an eyebrow. "You act more like one of the witch's experiments than a creature of nature." The man frowned-his beard dipped downward at the ends, at least. "If that's the case, then you deserve all the pity you get."

Merlin did not break the stare, trying to convey his message of "I don't need your pity."

It earned him a shake of the man's head. "Whether animal or not, you'd better scat. The moment that sun comes up, you'll be trampled, so find your hiding spot now."

Merlin was torn between scowling and nodding his head in thanks, which resulted in a dark look on his face while he swayed his head. He quickly retraced the boy's steps.

The fact that he'd left exactly when the man had told him to never crossed his mind.

The three people left in the runic chamber never looked up from their business around the hairbrush. Merlin's ear twitched toward it and picked up the soft chant of the ancient language. The words didn't make any more sense than the runes. With his claws tucked in, he silently followed the edge of the chamber. The shadows covered him, but his white-wrapped paws and stomach were a glaring giveaway, so he tried to stay as inconspicuous as possible while checking out the other circles.

Along with the quill and hair brush, there was a well worn piece of paper, a burnt out torch, a short piece of rope, and a multitude of weapons.

No doubt that's what the clanging drifting through a second doorway at the back of the chamber was from.

With a final glance at the three around the brush-enough to see that their eyes were unfocused and he needn't have worried about being caught—he sprinted the remaining ground and disappeared into the tunnel.

This, too, ended in a room, one much larger than the make-shift kitchen but not as large as the entrance chamber.

The ring of metal against metal stopped dead.

Merlin froze, one paw in the air in mid-step. Very slowly, he traced his eyes up to where the noise had originated from. The blacksmith's hammer quivered above a yet unshaped sword. Merlin's eyes continued upward, until they met the caution in the blacksmith's blatant stare.

The man's mouth set in a grim line, and he sent the hammer crashing down once more, studiously not looking in Merlin's direction.

Merlin knew he should leave. He was pushing his luck being seen at all, let alone being stared at by a man with a hammer, but there was something in the man's tense shoulders that intrigued Merlin.

He waltzed up to sit at the man's feet with a false air of bravado.

The blacksmith paused briefly, then resumed his hammering with increased vigour.

'Why aren't you kicking me away?' Merlin wondered. He stepped up his game and wove around the man's feet.

The only indication that the blacksmith even noticed was in the ear-splitting ring of the hammer missing its mark and striking stone.

Merlin swatted the man's knee.

The hammer crashed to the ground so close to his tail that the rush of wind made his fur stick up.

"I don't care if you report me or not you damned creature, I'm doing the work!"

Merlin stared wide-eyed at the man who was now glaring at him.

"If you're trying to get me behind, then you'll find a long night ahead of you, because I won't let the likes of _you_ or that witch put my family in danger! So get lost!" The blacksmith raised his hammer threateningly.

Merlin scrambled backward and escaped to the safety of the runic circles. The steady hammering resumed, and became the back beat of the people chanting.

So far, he'd encountered two very large and threatening men who didn't seem inclined to sorcery, four peasant guards even less threatening, and three probable sorcerers currently not in their right minds. If he added in the strange pair of sorcerers that had trapped Arthur, then they numbered eleven.

Which meant the rest had to be on the other side of the third stone doorway.

Five minutes and one dim torch-lit walk later, he was proven correct.

In sleep, these people apparently did not have to wear their fine purple cloaks. Instead the cloaks were piled into a neat stack just inside the entrance. Merlin found this out when he stumbled over the uneven ground and for once had a soft landing.

Unfortunately, the pile was no longer neat, but Merlin could hardly be expected to care when he was faced with exactly what he'd come to find—an estimate of their numbers.

Rows of cots lined the room with threadbare sheets meant to serve as blankets. In the dead of night, the only sound was a chorus of snores. From the heads he could see poking out of their sheets, the men far outnumbered the women, who were huddled along the far wall. There was no telling who amongst them was common peasant or sorcerer, but it was clear that none came from a wealthy background.

'Money, is that why they're here?'

Merlin followed a makeshift path through the cots, which led him to yet another doorway. Except this time, there actually _was_ a door, the wood a warm contrast against the stone of the rest of the underground fortress.

Merlin glanced behind him, but there was only the rise and fall of three dozen chests.

He nudged the door with his head. It was a rather shabby door, with patches he could even see through, but it didn't give.

He narrowed his eyes at the handle and urged his magic to the forefront, feeling the rush of warmth as it coursed through him.

The handle jiggled, but still the door did not open.

He gave up and slumped against the door. If he could only speak, there were half a dozen spells he could use. Instead, he was squinting through a hole in the door trying to see more than stone and fire shadows.

...a hole.

Merlin looked down at his tiny, bandage-wrapped paws and thin frame. Even with all of the fluff, he was a small creature. Perhaps...

A lot of wriggling and at least two splinters later, he was free to the other side. Seven brisk steps down the hallway led him to a much smaller sleeping chamber, with only ten cots, and nine bodies.

Silk sheets and thick pillows adorned every cot. Merlin prodded the nearest one. His paw sunk into feather heaven. Whoever these people were, they managed to make sleeping on the ground akin to Arthur's royal bed.

They, two, had a neat pile of purple cloaks. Merlin reluctantly pulled back his paw and carried on to where another wooden door stood in his way. This one had no holes, but Merlin's magic reached out of its own accord to loosen the bolt and handle.

His magic was becoming as rebellious as his tail.

When the door slid open without a creak, Merlin's breath caught in his throat.

If he needed further proof that Morgana was behind everything, then her sleeping form on an actual _bed _would do very nicely.

Merlin fled, the door closing behind him so suddenly that the breeze it created made the few lit torches dance. Stone and human and more stone blurred until he was past the hair brush and the quill and the runes and disappearing up the stone stairway. He didn't feel a trace of the magic in the hidden entrance. He only knew he'd made it through because he was faced with the dim light of dawn and the blessed smell of fresh air.

'The prat better be grateful that I did all of his work for him!'

The thought had no sooner crossed his mind when he caught a flash of silver in the corner of his eye.

Amidst three plainly staring, commoner-clothed _idiots_ of knights sat an owl.

"Why the hell is there an owl in front of a column of smoke?"

The owl turned its head for a split second, sending Merlin a look that held so much more intelligence than a mere animal's gaze ever could, then lifted into the air with a familiar flurry of screeches.

Merlin darted to the side just in time to avoid being trampled by the guards.

'So much for fresh air.'


	8. Catastrophe

**Warnings**: None!

**Words**: ~2,500 

**Chapter Eight: Catastrophe**

Merlin stretched languidly, enticing the guard to scratch at the fur between Merlin's ears.

"What are you doing back here, little fella?"

Merlin made his eyes as wide and innocent as possible and let out a pitiful mewl. He sucked in a breath, making his ribs stand out through the cover of bandages.

The guard's face softened. "I don't have anything for you."

Merlin meowed again, louder.

The guard shook his head.

One more tiny whimper of a meow had the guard all but melting.

"Alright, alright, I'll find you something. Just don't move." The guard ruffled the fur of Merlin's head one last time before heading through the stone doorway that led to the more lavish of the sleeping chambers.

Just before he disappeared from view, Merlin sent his magic to the keys hanging at the man's waist, and tugged them free of his belt. The keys hovered in the air until the man's footsteps were nothing more than echoes that even Merlin's keen hearing was hard-put to pick up. Merlin snatched the keys between his teeth and the magic settled back down into him with a huff. He stumbled at the sudden bone-deep weariness, a niggling worry forming at the back of his mind: such basic use of magic shouldn't have been so difficult.

Nonetheless, he had the keys. He trotted down the stone steps that were no longer being guarded. At their base was a single dungeon cell. Like everything else in the underground lair, the cell bars were made of stone, with crude hinges the only indication that it was capable of opening. His friends were crammed in behind.

Gwaine was braced against the back of the cell as he lazily kicked at the door. Percival sat crowded back as far from Gwaine's foot as he could manage. Pressed up against him, Arthur had his arms crossed and eyes closed. None of them noticed Merlin's arrival, which meant they were either deep in thought or—and he suspected this was the case for Gwaine—daydreaming about where else they could be.

Merlin shook his head enough that the keys jangled.

Three pairs of eyes snapped to him.

"Wha-you can't be serious! We left it with Leon and Elyan!"

Merlin rolled his eyes at Arthur's incredulity, but flung the keys toward them with a flick of his head.

It was Gwaine who caught them. "If you weren't a cat, I'd say you should be knighted," he told Merlin

'If you only knew,' Merlin thought. Of all the things he'd done in Arthur's service that deserved knighting, getting himself stuck as a cat and being too stubborn to leave his friends alone was probably not his crowning achievement.

While Gwaine set about twisting his arm to reach the keyhole, Arthur was staring unashamedly at Merlin.

'What?' Merlin tried to say.

Perhaps understanding the inquisitive tone in Merlin's meow, Arthur answered, "Come here."

Merlin narrowed his eyes.

"Oh come on, it's not like I'm going to eat you."

'That's debatable.' Nonetheless, Merlin made his way to stand in front of Arthur, with only the bars separating them.

"No, come _here_," Arthur said with a nod to the ground on the other side of the bars.

Merlin let out a sigh, but squeezed through the bars. Were he able to, he'd have crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. Instead, his tail flicked back and forth.

He let out an indignant noise when he was grabbed by the back of the neck and yanked forward.

He tried to claw his way out, until he got a light smack on the back of his head.

"Stay still."

Merlin was about to show what he thought of _that_ order, when he felt gentle fingers prying at the tight knot of his bandages. He sagged to the ground, resigned, and Arthur cautiously let go of his neck to focus entirely on his task.

The bandages tugged painfully when Arthur finally unwrapped them, pulling at wounds not yet healed.

He felt more than heard Arthur's breath of concern. "You shouldn't have come," Arthur said. The words were soft enough that it was clear Arthur was talking only to Merlin.

As if Merlin could understand.

As if Merlin was human.

'You shouldn't have left me,' he answered, even though the words meant nothing to Arthur in this form.

A second hand descended upon his neck, but it was very gentle. Merlin shifted enough to take in the almost pained look on Percival's face.

'I'm sorry,' he thought. Of them all, it was Percival that was most adamant that Merlin stay behind, safe.

"We'll get you out of here," Percival said.

Just then, Merlin's ear twitched of its own accord. It twisted back to better pick up the faint sound coming from the top of the stairs.

The guard was on his way back.

He tried to bolt—he had to beat the guard!-but Arthur had his fur in a firm grip once more, and was trying to retie the bandage.

'Arthur, let go!'

Arthur frowned at Merlin's desperate growl but held tight, even as Gwaine finally managed to twist the key in the lock and push the door open just a crack.

The moment Arthur retied his bandages, Merlin turned and swiped at him. The surprise was enough for Merlin to wriggle free and charge back up the stairs. He skidded over the last step just as the guard's head cleared the doorway.

Merlin forced his gaze to meet the guard's grin, and the shame only grew when he saw the sizable chunk of meat that the guard carelessly tossed to him.

"It's duck," the guard said. "They were saving it for tomorrow's stew, but they'll hardly mind if they have rat instead. Especially if they don't know."

Merlin would have grinned, but had to settle for a grateful rub against the man's legs. He started nibbling on the meat solely for show—his stomach was in too many knots to have an appetite. Perhaps the guard couldn't see the open cell door from the top of the stairs, but how was Merlin going to smuggle three men past him and out of an underground fortress?

The guard soon stepped toward the stairs. Upon seeing Merlin's wide, alarmed eyes, he stopped to pat Merlin on the back. "Don't worry, I'll return as soon as I check on the prisoners."

That was _exactly_ why Merlin was worried.

He dashed to block the guard's path. If Merlin had thought ahead, he would have realized that the man wasn't expecting a crazy animal to run in front of him, so it was inevitable that the guard tripped over Merlin.

Merlin winced at the heavy crash, but he couldn't deny that it covered the squeal of stone against stone that a twitch of his ears had picked up.

As the guard sputtered out curses and rubbed his temples, a heavy fist sent him crashing right back to the floor. Gwaine stood over him with a grin, looking very pleased with himself.

"Wake up the whole underground, why don't you," Arthur muttered.

"What makes you think they're asleep? It could be midday and we wouldn't have a clue."

Percival pushed past the arguing knights and bent to check over Merlin. "He didn't hurt you?"

Merlin nudged the chunk of roast duck with a bandaged paw.

"Good."

"If you're done fawning over that _thing_, we can get out of here."

Arthur was nearly through the stone doorway when Gwaine grabbed onto his sleeve. "What if they're out there waiting for us? We can't just waltz around unarmed. Well, _I _can, but you two wouldn't stand a chance."

"Your confidence in me is fathomless."

Gwaine shrugged.

"He's got a point," Percival said, "We need to know what we're dealing with."

Merlin perked up. He might not have a voice to tell them the exact layout of the underground, or how many sorcerers and peasants there were, but he could do this.

While they started onto the topic of horrible ideas, Merlin crept through the doorway into the sorcerers' sleeping chambers. There was only a single cot occupied—Merlin thought he recognized the sorcerer who had trapped the knights in a hole—so Merlin crossed the room to the ratty wooden door and meowed softly back.

The sleeping sorcerer didn't even stir, and three heads peeked into the room.

"Hey!" Arthur whisper-yelled, "Are you trying to get us killed you stupid cat?"

Merlin rolled his eyes. With one last glance across the chamber to where Morgana had once lay sleeping, he squeezed through the hole in the ratty wooden door and out of their sight. He paused.

Sure enough, three hasty sets of footsteps came crashing to the door. Merlin was relieved when the handle jiggled and the door creaked open without so much as a hint of his magic. Arthur, Gwaine and Percival all but fell out, only to freeze when they realized they were in yet another room lined with cots.

Only a handful of the cots had bodies. Among them were the four peasants that Merlin had been brought in by, and just to the right of the exit, almost on top of the diminished pile of cloaks, slept the fur-faced cook.

The others, he figured, were working with the sorcerers' circles.

"Are you sure the cat knows where its going?" asked Gwaine. His voice was quiet, inaudible to the few sleepers, but a twitch of his ear had Merlin hearing clearly.

To his surprise, it was Arthur who answered. "Not much point breaking us out only to lead us to a trap."

Without his consent, Merlin's tail perked up, held high with his pride.

"Oi, that wasn't a compliment, cat."

Percival and Gwaine simultaneously slapped their hands over Arthur's mouth as disgruntled mumbles filled the air. Merlin froze, listening for any coherency. Sheets rustled as the boy—Chalen, Merlin remembered—turned over, but then the room was filled with only snores once more.

Merlin kept going.

The short walk remaining was uneventful, and soon even the knights could hear the steady chanting to the beat of the blacksmith's hammer.

"What now, Princess?"

Merlin stared up at Arthur hopefully.

The prat shook his head. "We have no weapons, while they have magic, and who knows how many there are."

'Four dozen,' Merlin thought, 'But only a handful of sorcerers. The rest are untrained peasants.' His right paw twitched with the urge to scrawl out his thoughts, be he had no ink, and the rock of the underground did not scratch easily.

What good was collecting information if he couldn't tell anyone?

He would just have to show them. He bit down on Arthur's pant leg and tugged.

Arthur nearly kicked him in surprise. "Now what are you doing?"

Merlin tugged again. With an overly loud sigh, Arthur moved forward.

'They'll be too focused on the runes to notice us,' Merlin thought. Arthur, unfortunately, could not read minds. But when Merlin had dragged him out just enough to see the nearest circle, he could tell that Arthur was figuring it out.

"What's with the chanting?" Gwaine asked.

"They're doing something with that thing in the middle," Arthur answered. "See how it's got a blue tinge?"

"Magic, then."

"Obviously."

Gwaine threw his hands in the air. "Well how am I supposed to know? In Camelot, everything is tried as magic, and half of the time it turns out to be something completely normal."

"I don't think it was ever 'normal'," Percival cut in. "The question is if they'll notice their prisoners walking out."

"We need to test it," Arthur agreed.

Merlin nodded without realizing it. 'Good idea.'

He found himself being stared at rather pointedly.

'What, me? Again? Do I have to do everything?' Merlin's indignant meow clearly did not convey this message, because Arthur nudged him forcefully into the open, to Percival's horror.

Merlin let out a low growl, but stalked forward obediently.

He took a moment to breathe in the scent and feel the hum of magic all around him. Over a dozen circles, with nine actively being used—so much focused energy almost made his head buzz. That buzzing got worse as he approached the nearest three chanting people. Again, only one was dressed in any semblance of riches. It was this person whose eyes snapped toward Merlin.

'Fantastic.'

A flash of pity crossed the sorceress' eyes before she returned all attention to the blue-tinged hair brush.

The buzzing became overwhelming.

Merlin stumbled at its intensity, and vaguely felt something soft brush against his side—the edge of a peasant's cloak. Suddenly, the buzzing became a physical force, dragging him forward. He felt the magic singing in his blood, trying to escape, but it was something else that was being drawn out of him. His eyelids drooped, and his tail sagged.

His magic roared to the surface, shredding through the connection.

Merlin scrambled backward until he hit the smooth stone of the wall.

'They're drawing out the peasants' energy!'

Nearly thirty non-magic users, useless at fighting compared to a knight, with no sense for taking a castle by siege. Now, Merlin understood their purpose. He knew why they wore identical cloaks.

His revelation was cut short when something firm landed on the back of his neck.

He looked up and stared into Arthur's determined gaze.

"Come on. We figured out how to get past." Arthur nodded back to where Gwaine was tying a purple cloak about his neck and Percival was holding an extra for Arthur.

Merlin's eyes went wide. '_No_.' But he looked to the chamber full of enemies. Along its edges were similarly cloaked peasants, huddled against the wall with bowed heads.

Arthur, Gwaine and Percival would blend right in.

Merlin swallowed his trepidation and pressed himself to the chamber wall. He led them slowly along its edge, heading for the staircase that led to fresh air and freedom. The hum of magic was ever present, but there was no tug. The backdrop of chanting never faltered, and they made it past the hair brush, then a crossbow, and the piece of rope.

One sorcerer glanced their way, and Merlin froze.

The sorcerer's eyes traveled over each of them in turn, but the knights kept their heads bowed. Finally, the sorcerer turned instead to a young man slumped against the wall. The man had barely raised his head when the sorcerer's lips moved and his eyes flashed gold.

The man got to his feet and marched to the runic circle surrounding a broad sword, swapping with a frail old woman.

Merlin let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, and they began their steady crawl again.

All they had left to pass was the quill.

"Percival, what are you doing?" Gwaine hissed.

Merlin whipped around. Percival was staring at a glowing spear, bewildered.

Gwaine made a move to yank him back, but halfway through the motion he stilled.

"Percival? Gwaine?"

The two took a step toward the circle.

Merlin yanked on Arthur's pant leg, _hard_, to stop him from trying to reach the knights.

"Let go, they're going to get us caught!"

Merlin clenched his jaw even tighter around the cloth, to the point that it began to ache.

Arthur started walking anyway, with Merlin dragging along behind him. Another step, and the feeling of having a string pulled from his veins returned. Merlin extended his claws, but there was no purchase on the smooth rock surface.

Arthur's walk became mechanical.

Merlin reacted with a surge of magic, strong enough that it knocked Arthur right over, and made Gwaine and Percival stumble.

The rope dulled to its original musty brown, and the tug disappeared.

As did the glazed look in the peasants' eyes.

Four dozen heads turned their way, and all hell broke loose.

* * *

><p><strong>AN**: My editing was interrupted with the news that there was a meteor shower going on. I don't normally enjoy being interrupted, but in this one case, I was motivated to finish quickly so I could see shooting stars.

I wonder if any of you were watching the same sky, hours before or after me, or maybe at the very same time?


	9. Catacomb

**Warnings: **None! Apart from the fact that this story hasn't been updated in forever... Sorry!

**Words: **~3000

**Chapter Nine – Catacomb**

Arthur couldn't fit the pieces together—one minute he was trying to reach Gwaine and Percival to knock some sense into their brain, and the next he was sprawled on the ground with the attention of every enemy in the room.

And his head _hurt_.

In the moment of silence that followed, he sought out his knights. Percival was sitting on the floor hardly two feet away, with the same look of bewilderment that Arthur felt. Gwaine was already making his way to his feet.

Arthur looked next for the cat.

There was no sign of it.

Then all hell broke loose.

The room erupted into a flurry of arms flailing and voices jumbling into a cacophony of noise that did nothing for Arthur's headache. He swore he could hear the ominous sound of shifting rock in the background.

When Gwaine's hand hovered in front of Arthur's face, Arthur took it gratefully.

"They're like chickens!" Gwaine said over the noise.

"Chickens that can kill us with a mere word," Arthur said.

But as he watched the chaos unfold, he realized that he wasn't entirely right. The vast majority of people were scrambling in every direction, running into each other, tearing off their cloaks, and altogether looking as confused as Arthur felt. Amongst them were a handful of sorcerers trying to get control of the situation, given away by their glowing eyes.

Arthur grabbed Percival's arm. "Find a way to break through the entrance. Gwaine and I try to send the people your way."

Percival nodded, and took off toward the stairs leading up. He had no idea if that was the right way, but they definitely didn't want to go _down_. He glanced back for the cat, but he couldn't find it amongst the scramble of people. He forced himself to focus on his task.

Gwaine, meanwhile, was pointing at the stone roof. "I don't think that's going to hold up much longer."

The shifting sound of stone was only growing louder, and dirt was beginning to rain down onto sorcerer and peasant alike.

"Then we'd better hurry up." Arthur leaped forward and grabbed the nearest person. "If you want to live, then go that way," he said. The peasant looked at him with wild eyes, until a particularly loud crack made him startle and run for the stairs.

"What do you think you're doing, dear brother?"

oOoOoOo

The din of chaos faded as Merlin drifted toward unconsciousness, only to surge back when a sudden throb of pain came from his tail.

He pushed his head free of his hiding place—the cloak that had come off of Arthur when he fell—and surveyed the catastrophe.

He hadn't meant to set free all of the peasants, only his friends, but his magic was too strong. By pure instinct alone, he'd managed to tear apart this underground fortress.

Another throb of his tail made him scamper out from under the cloak, but there were feet everywhere and no place was safe. His tail tucked itself in around his paws as Merlin attempted to navigate around the stampede. He was kicked and stomped and all around abused by the time he managed to catch a glimpse of Arthur, shoving a peasant toward the stairs.

Merlin took a deep breath and prepared to battle his way through the crowd once more, when suddenly the ground was falling away from under his feet.

He was not proud of the screech that came out of his mouth.

"Whoa there, I'm just trying to help."

Merlin vaguely recognized the voice, and when he turned his head, he was not surprised to see Chalen. The boy had a couple of scrapes, but was otherwise unharmed.

He cradled Merlin against his chest and started running, bringing Merlin farther and farther from his target.

'Sorry,' Merlin thought, and then he dug his back claws into Chalen's stomach and scrambled out of his arms.

"Hey!"

Merlin braced himself for the painful landing, but thanks to some miraculous twisting from his tail, he'd landed on his feet. It was the only time he ever thought he'd be grateful that the tail seemed to have a mind of its own.

He looked up at Chalen and tried to convey his gratitude.

'You need to leave.' The meows made Chalen pause in his attempt to pick him back up. Merlin nodded to the stairs.

"But—"

Merlin pressed his head against Chalen's shin, nudging him. Then he took off in the opposite direction.

He didn't even think to look back when he caught sight of Morgana, now standing mere steps away from Arthur.

"What do you think you're doing, dear brother?"

oOoOoOo

Arthur reached for his sword, but of course it wasn't there.

Morgana was not so unlucky—Arthur could make out some form of weapon in her right hand, glowing faintly like the objects around the room.

In fact, if he squinted, he could almost swear it was…

The hairbrush?

Arthur almost found the will to laugh. "I always knew you were vain, but I'm not sure now is the time to worry about your hair."

"I chose it with you in mind," Morgana sneered. "Did you honestly believe I'd let you walk out of here alive?"

"That was the plan, yes."

Arthur could practically feel Gwaine's grimace as the knight held back some snarky comment or other.

A quick glance told Arthur that most of the people had either left or were on their way. The handful who remained were drawing near, coming to stand behind Morgana.

There would be no winning this fight.

"You're wondering what makes this brush so important, aren't you Arthur?"

Before Arthur could even think of a response, Gwaine was saying, "I thought it was obvious. Your hair has definitely seen better days."

Morgana's eyes flashed, but her only response was to toss the brush at Gwaine.

"Don't catch—"

It was too late; Gwaine snatched it out of the air by the handle.

"I don't see what's so special…" He trailed off, staring at his hand in a mix of awe and horror.

Suddenly, the meagre flames of the wall torches burst into infernos.

Gwaine threw the brush as far away as he could.

Morgana laughed. "That was magic. It feels amazing, does it not?"

Arthur subconsciously stepped away from Gwaine, who was still staring at his hand in horror.

"You see Arthur? You'll never know who to trust again! How can you distinguish a sorcerer from a nobody when they can both do magic?"

oOoOoOo

Merlin had frozen in place when he felt the sudden surge of power in Gwaine. He was close enough now that at least two of the sorcerers behind Morgana had given him a cursory glance and deemed him nonthreatening.

He remembered Gilli, with too much power for his own good.

It was a clever plan. If nothing else, there would be a substantial number of magic users added to Morgana's army, wielding magic-inducing swords and axes.

"It won't work, Morgana," Arthur said. "My people will be judged on the deeds they perform, nothing more."

Merlin almost went dizzy with pride.

Then the steady rumbling of shifting stone was broken with a resounding crash. The far end of the chamber began to cave, sending a wave of dust sweeping their way.

The sorcerers scrambled.

"Your _people_," Morgana spat, "cannot be judged by you if you're dead."

She raised her hand, even as the next crash of stone was only a body length away.

Merlin leaped.

Morgana's piercing screech was enough to set Arthur and Gwaine into motion. Arthur hesitated for a moment, and Merlin, firmly attached to Morgana's head, gave him a cold glare.

'I'm not doing this for fun, prat!'

Gwaine grabbed Arthur's arm, and with a final nod, they took off toward the stairs.

Merlin tried not to yelp when Morgana's hand clamped onto his back.

"You insane creature—"

Merlin barely had enough time to force all of his magic into a makeshift barrier before the rest of the roof came down on them both.

oOoOoOo

Arthur was still choking on the dust when the rumbling finally settled down.

His ears rang, his eyes stung, and his throat was raw, but he was alive.

The sunken pit in front of him meant that the cat was not.

"Sire, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Arthur told Percival.

There must have been something written on Arthur's face, because the large knight didn't ask about the cat.

Arthur turned to survey their newest mess.

Three dozen terrified, dirty peasants stared back.

"Right, listen up!" A buzz Arthur didn't even notice suddenly died down. "I don't know how you got caught up with Morgana, but it's over. Return to your families, and know that we will not persecute you for the use of magic that was witnessed today."

The buzz roared back into life, until Arthur raised his hand. "That said, if any of you are found using magic in Camelot, you will not be spared a second time."

This time, the silence remained.

As Arthur, Gwaine, and Percival made their way back to their camp, it was with bittersweet news:

Morgana was no longer a threat.

oOoOoOo

There wasn't room to breathe.

That was Merlin's first thought when he regained consciousness.

He couldn't tell which way was up. Something was pressing against his chest, but whether that was the ground caused by his own body weight, or whether that was a chunk of rock on top of him, he couldn't be sure.

Merlin tried to shift a paw to his chest to make room, but he couldn't figure out where exactly his paws _were_.

He took a shallow breathe.

It hurt.

But it wasn't his lungs pressed painfully against his ribs that was causing the most discomfort-it was the throb in his back, stemming from the base of his tail. His magic was all but gone now, and the adrenaline with it. There was nothing left to dull the pain. Nothing to relieve the pressure.

He worked his jaw open to meow, but what came out was a wheeze.

He was startled when there was an answering groan, followed by a hacking cough to his left.

'Morgana,' he thought.

Even his thoughts were weak.

The air was getting warmer—his own body heat in a confined space—and the effect was that his small space shrunk even further. He tried again to shift a paw, or even _see_ a paw. He knew they were capped in white, and he had a cat's ability to see at night, so it shouldn't be all that hard.

He only found it by the slightly lighter shade of black.

"You—" Morgana's weak protest was briefly interrupted by another round of painful, wet coughs. "You have magic. You saved us both."

Merlin ignored her. Pressing forward was futile, so he tried to press backward. The pain that shot through him would have made the edges of his world darken if he could see anything. As it was, he felt faint with the sheer agony of it, and was glad for a moment to have the darkness to hide his pathetic form.

A breeze wafted over his backside.

He settled on turning his head instead.

There was enough light coming from somewhere behind him that he could vaguely make out Morgana, lying curled on her side.

"You have magic," Morgana repeated through pained gasps. "Why did you protect him?"

Merlin made a soft noise that he hoped said he was sorry.

Not for protecting Arthur—never for that—but because he always seemed to be bringing Morgana pain.

There was no response.

oOoOoOo

"You left her behind?"

Arthur couldn't hide his surprise at the dark tone in Elyan's voice.

"We couldn't get back in through the rubble," he explained.

Elyan's stony face did not soften.

"Why do you care anyway?" Gwaine asked.

"Because Gwen will kill me when she finds out we lost the cat!"

Arthur's teeth clenched, but it was Percival who responded. "No one could have escaped. Little Cat died performing a brave deed."

Elyan glared at the ground.

No one was fooled by his using Gwen as an excuse.

"Sire, perhaps we should look for the body," Leon said. "I find it unlikely that the Lady Morgana wouldn't use her magic to escape, but if we are lucky, we may also find her."

It was a ridiculous notion—sifting through rubble to find the scrawny body of a dead cat—but Arthur couldn't deny the possibility of his sister surviving. Nor could he deny the ache of leaving behind the creature he had begun to think of as a comrade.

"We will search until sundown."

oOoOoOo

Merlin shifted his front paws under him, but he couldn't get them to hold his weight.

He let out a huff-he had to keep going-and forced himself backward once more. The pain reared again, but suddenly there was a pocket of fresh air to breathe.

It was enough.

He closed his eyes and caught his breath, listening to Morgana steadying her own.

His ears twitched, catching a voice that was heavily muffled through the layer of rock.

'Arthur,' he thought.

He tried to call out, but the moment he sucked in the air to do so, he was choking.

The voices grew louder.

Morgana's cursed.

oOoOoOo

Arthur's heart sunk as he scanned the crater of rubble. It wasn't the size that scared him, but the depth. There had to be layer after layer of rock, and no living creature could survive under that.

Assuming they could find the cat at all.

Arthur watched with narrowed eyes when Percival set out toward the edge of the crater. The knight looked left and right, but couldn't bring himself to step out onto the rubble. Where could they even start?

"Percival-"

"Don't," Percival bit out. "We have to try."

"The light will never last long enough for us to get through all of this."

"Then we'd better hurry."

After another moment of hesitation, Percival squared his back and took the first step forward.

Arthur went around to the other side and did the same.

Soon, Elyan and Gwaine had gone to the east and west edges as well. Leon did his best to be on lookout with a broken leg.

The sun was level with the horizon by the time they'd moved a hundred rocks between them. The only evidence of their hard work was the haphazard ring of rocks lining the crater edge-the rubble itself hardly had a dent.

They would have continued like that until the last sliver of sun was swallowed if it weren't for a sudden hoot.

Everyone froze.

An owl sat perched on one of the larger chunks of rock, staring back at them with unblinking eyes.

oOoOoOo

"Please."

The desperation in Morgana's voice was heartbreaking. The sounds of digging were close enough that even a weak meow would be heard, but if Arthur found them, then Morgana would undoubtedly be taken back to Camelot and executed.

"Please, don't let him find me," she said.

The tone was a painful reminder of when she'd been in his arms, gasping for breath, silently begging for Merlin to help.

Merlin's guilt warred with his instinct to protect Arthur, until at last he dragged his body away from their alcove. He owed Morgana this, at least. Even though she would never know it was Merlin who spared her, and even though his guilt would never go away, he could consider them equal now.

Through the haze brought on by almost unbearable pain, Merlin backed up until he could feel the dying sunlight across his back, and the small hole to their alcove became unremarkable, camouflaged among the rubble.

The hoot of the owl blasted right over his head.

oOoOoOo

"Sire, that bird-"

"I know."

The same bird that had begun screeching the moment they'd come too close to the underground hideout.

Arthur shifted, curling his fingers around the hilt of his sword.

The owl screeched and spread its wings, almost as long as Arthur's arm span. When Arthur didn't immediately move, the owl hopped two rocks over.

"Wait," Percival said, halting the unsheathing of Arthur's sword. He cautiously stepped further into the crater, where no one had yet begun to clear.

The owl hopped forward again, until it was only an arm's length away from Percival.

Percival moved toward it.

"You're following a _bird_."

"We followed a cat earlier."

Arthur pressed his mouth into a firm line, silenced.

The owl moved again, and this time when Percival followed, he caught sight of a tuft of dusty black.

When Arthur saw the hope on Percival's face, he couldn't help but rush forward. Percival stepped back to let Arthur see for himself.

There lay a small, crumpled ball of fluff, with now brown bandages and a steadily rising chest.

oOoOoOo

The owl hooted again, close enough to make Merlin's ears ring.

He looked up through his cloudy vision to see Arthur. Dirty, bloody, and completely disheveled, but never had he looked so much like the king he would become.

Merlin held on to the thin fragment of his consciousness as he was jostled into Arthur's hold.

"You're an idiot," Arthur said.

Merlin managed one last glance to where Morgana was hidden, and prayed that his choice wouldn't bring about Arthur's downfall. Then he was out.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **So... to those who were following this from the beginning... it's been a couple of years, yeah? Sorry! All I can offer you is hope that it won't take another two and a half years for this to be updated! I've got the next chapter basically done, but in need of major editing, and then there's only one chapter left. I'm as much excited as I am sad to see it coming to a close.

But mostly excited because seriously, this unfinished story has been stuck on my mind for over two years.


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